The peace movements in the East

Abstract

Europe has been living with a slogan which has clear-cut Orwellian connotations: FIGHT FOR PEACE. Whereas the basis and attitudes of Western independent peace movements are commonly known and widely publicised, in Central and Eastern Europe this is true only about the World Peace Council and its official national branches: they are in fact parts of the state apparatus, transmission devices for furthering the aims of the Soviet Union. However, the unofficial and truly independent peace movements in that part of Europe come to the surface mostly in connection with the imprisonment or harassment of their supporters, or — from time to time — in an isolated exchange of views between some Eastern peace activist and his Western counterpart in the Western mass media. The value of such exchanges has often been limited on both sides by the lack of information, the main reason for this being that the activities and very existence of independent peace groups in East European countries are regarded by the governments concerned as a top state secret. In this issue of Index on Censorship we attempt to overcome the barriers of ‘peace censorship’. The following essay by Professor Bedřich Placák (former spokesman of Czechoslovakia's Charter 77) gives an insight into the general way of thinking of East European intellectuals on the problems of peace. The other three articles focus on the actual situation of the independent peace movements in the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic and Hungary.