THE
LITERARY IMPACT
617
OF
THE AMERICAN AND FRENCH REVOLUTIONS
name of liberty, to be the ideological underpinnings of both overt and
covert state terrorism. Interrogating the foundations of the status quo,
these intellectuals were often interrogated by the police. They re–
habilitated the political significance of doubt and demonstrated that the
official celebration of humanism was nothing but the camouflage of
barbarism. They rediscovered and internalized the values of individualism
expressed in the tradition begun with the American Revolution. State
socialism proclaimed the rights of totality, the supremacy of collectivism,
and the obligation of the individual to accept this
diktat
of monistic
determinism, codified by the agitprop bureaucrats. At the opposite pole,
the advocates of the powerless insisted that only freedom can be the
foundation of power in a rational community of autonomous in–
dividuals.
The phenomenology of political awakening in Eastern and Central
Europe created a special status for intellectuals. They were made to feel
important and irreplaceable. To those less politically active members of
society, they were role models and truth-tellers. This explains the
preeminent roles given to Andrei Sakharov, Vaclav Havel, Zhelyu
Zhelev, Miklos Haraszti, Janos Kis, and others who, under less demand–
ing circumstances, would not have become educators of the polis.
In
different countries, they were nevertheless in similar positions in the
struggle against similar systems.
In
order to remain loyal to their critical
mission, they had to adopt an adversarial attitude. Their discourse en–
abled emancipation to the extent that it debunked the prevailing lie and
invited people to live in truth. Their vision of politics was fundamentally
anti-political, that is, anti-Machiavellian. They rejected the logic of ac–
quiescence and proposed instead a logic of sedition and liberation. While
the system tried to penetrate all aspects of life with its ideological
tentacles, the critical intellectuals offered an alternative vision, distrustful
of any ultimate truth except that of freedom. They played a dangerous
game; they paid with time in prison; yet eventually their efforts were re–
paid in support from the populace.
So it is understandable that during the first stage of post-Commu–
nism the masses applauded the intellectuals and appointed or elected
many of them
to
leading positions. The intellectuals' skepticism about
politics was overcome by their feeling of duty to perform public service.
In Hungary, Janos Kis became chairman of the Alliance of Free
Democrats; Gaspar Miklos Tamas served as a member of the parliament,
as did Andrei Sakharov, in the former Soviet Union. For Vaclav Havel
to have become president of his country seemed natural.
Now, however, politics in East and Central Europe has entered a
different stage, creating new challenges for intellectuals. The old division
