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new idea, institution, or phenomenon) has come out of the antitotali–
tarian upheaval in East-Central Europe: "Political revolutions happen or
take place by the change in sovereignty. In these terms, a political
revolution took place in
all
previous Soviet satellite states in the year
1989, for popular sovereignty has been substituted for party sovereignty in
all
of them, at least
de jure,
if not necessarily also
de facto."
All these societies have been deprived of civic culture to a greater or
lesser extent. In
all
of them the individual has been repressed, regimented,
and manipulated as a simple pawn by the powers-that-be. These countries
are all experiencing today the revival of politics as the liberated space
where the most human features of the individual find their natural
expression. And, one might add,
all
have rediscovered the value of the
revolutionary experience and, as a corollary, morality as a major source
of political behavior. To those who claim that no new ideas have
emerged during the antitotalitarian upheavals in Eastern and Central Eu–
rope, one is tempted to answer that it was during these uprisings (or
revolutions or rebellions - the best term remains to be found) that con–
cepts like popular sovereignty, European consciousness, civic rights, and
many others re-acquired full semantic justification. During such momen–
tous times people have the chance to become part and parcel of the
dream for the Great Republic, or, to use Hannah Arendt's term, they
rehabilitate the "revolutionary tradition and its lost treasury."
Communism cannot be considered completely dead. It is true that
in its traditional form, as a messianic, militaristic, fanatic movement, it has
been defeated from the historical point of view. With the grotesque ex–
ception of those incurably possessed, nobody takes seriously the commu–
nist ideology. On the other hand, the recent events in Slovakia and Yu–
goslavia as well as the growth of populist-authoritarian movements in
most of these countries has shown that democracy is not the inevitable
successor to communism.
One of the prevailing illusions during the postcommunist euphoric
stage was that xenophobia and other outbursts of the tribalist, pseudo–
communitarian, and mystical-romantic spirit would remain merely a
marginal phenomenon. But as the economic situation has continued to
deteriorate and the new elites have failed to offer persuasive models for a
rapid transition, these movements have gained momentum. They recruit
primarily among the frustrated and disenchanted social groups by stirring
responsive chords in those unable to overcome the traumatic effects of a
sudden break with the past. In countries with large national minorities,
these demagogic movements play upon ethnic resentments and phobias.
We sometimes have the disturbing feeling of an historical
deja vu:
histri–
onics and hysteria commingle in explosions of intolerance and exclusive–
ness. Indeed, the dividing line now seems to separate the pro-European
