Decommunization after the “Velvet Revolutions” in East Central Europe

Abstract

Abstract Perhaps the most surprising feature of the dramatic demise of communism in Eastern Europe was its form—pacts between reform Communists and democratic movements in Poland and Hungary and swift, civic-led peaceful revolutions in Czechoslovakia and East Germany. In the aftermath of communism’s collapse, demands have been raised in every post-Communist state for identification and disenfranchisement, if not prosecution, of those who thwarted earlier reforms, violated human rights, collaborated with the secret police, or abused their official positions under the old regime. The pervasiveness of such demands can be traced in part to the fact that, unlike violent and protracted conflicts, the “velvet revolutions” left the “vanquished” Communists alive and well, with their privileges virtually intact. A thorough settling of accounts with the old regime, however, has proved not only complex but potentially dangerous. For example, calls for prosecution of the old guard have jeopardized coalition rule in Poland and Hungary. Meanwhile, velvet revolutionaries in Germany and Czechoslovakia have grappled with contradictions between rule of law and purge. Vaclav Havel, the first post-Communist President of Czechoslovakia, described his nation’s law on screening state institutions for former secret police collaborators as “a somewhat revolutionary law, a law that is attempting to do something from above that our society failed to do and did not have the strength to do from below.” This problem of carrying out a second, democratic revolution against entrenched remnants of Communist rule in Central Europe is examined in this chapter.