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The Rebirth of Politics After the Revolution
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17997 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1990 |
3,561 Words |
| Author
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Herbert J. Ellison
Herbert J. Ellison is chairman of Russian and east
European studies at the University of Washington. He was
formerly secretary of the Kennan Institute for Advanced
Russian Studies in Washington, D.C. |
Nineteen eight-nine was a year of revolution in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In fact, it marked one of the major political transformations of the century. The power of communist parties was either shattered or sharply reduced; their main institutions and policies were widely rejected; and powerful alternative political movements and parties emerged to challenge the communist monopoly and compete for national leadership.
The coercive role - both ideological and military - of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe was abruptly abandoned by Mikhail Gorbachev. The Soviet leader repudiated the Stalinist claim to protect socialism abroad and tolerated criticism of the Soviet model at home. At the same time, Gorbachev encouraged the programs reform-minded East European communist leaders, by precept and example, and pressed conservative communist states to change leaders and policies. Thus did he sow reform and reap revolution.
While the process has varied by country - from the tranquil parliamentary change of Hungary to the violent revolution of Romania - its results were similar: reduction or abolition of traditional communist party powers by a variety of reforms.
Constitutional reform included the revision of electoral laws and parliamentary powers, as well as the abolition of the constitutional guarantee of communist party primacy and the legalization of opposition parties. The simultaneous reform of judicial and legal structures reduced or eliminated party control of the judiciary. Party organizations for youth, workers, and peasants were restructured or disbanded, and the apparatus of party organizations often abolished. Noncommunist were admitted to the cabinets in several countries and held a majority of ministerial portfolios in Poland and Czechoslovakia. The whole process was a replay, in reverse, of communist takeovers in Eastern Europe from 1945 to 1948.
Equally dramatic were the leadership changes within communist parties, bringing a shift of power to reformers, whether by gradual stages, as in the USSR Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia (especially Slovenia and Croatia), or abruptly but relatively peacefully, as in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, or with violence, as in Romania. Reform leadership not only rejected the ideological and political line of such leaders as Leonid Brezhnev, Janos Kadar, Gustav Husak, and Erich Honecker but also introduced or promised major changes in the party's role in state and society, in party ideology and program, and in the practices of internal party government. In sum,
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