Solidarity In Poland Research Articles

The Divine Plan: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Dramatic End of the Cold War by Paul Kengor and Robert Orlando (review)

Reviewed by: The Divine Plan: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Dramatic End of the Cold War by Paul Kengor and Robert Orlando Richard A. Spinello The Divine Plan: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Dramatic End of the Cold War. By Paul Kengor and Robert Orlando. (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books. 2019. Pp. 221. $19.21. ISBN: 9781610171540.) When John Paul II was elected to the papacy in 1978, no one quite knew what to expect. This Polish Pope, the "man from a far country," as he called himself, was not well known outside the Catholic Church. The media were initially fascinated with him but only because he was a non-Italian pope. Some pundits predicted the beginning of liberal reforms in the Church, but they were obviously unfamiliar with John Paul II's writings or his reputation for theological orthodoxy. Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, an ethics professor at the Catholic University of Lublin, was a resolute defender of Humanae Vitae along with the traditional principles of Catholic morality. No one, however, would have predicted that this philosopher-pope would be instrumental in ending the protracted cold war and dissolving the Soviet Union. The Divine Plan explores the consequential alliance between Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan who joined forces in this noble effort. The book is based on a documentary of the same name, and is structured as a play in five acts with these two major actors. The book's basic premise is that Divine Providence brought these two leaders together on the world stage so that they could rescue the world from communism. [End Page 388] Secular historians will not find this argument persuasive, but it will surely resonate with Catholic historians. What might be surprising for the latter group is that Ronald Regan saw himself as a "tool of God" for this memorable undertaking. The Divine Plan devotes several instructive chapters to reviewing the symmetries between the lives of these two men. Both survived an assassination attempt within two months of each other. And both believed that they were spared by Divine Providence for a transcendent purpose. John Paul II was convinced that Our Lady of Fatima intervened to save his life. As he confided in an interview shortly before his death: this professional assassin certainly shot to kill, "yet it was as if someone was guiding and deflecting that bullet." There are other interesting parallels as well. Both men were actors—Reagan, of course, was a professional actor before he entered politics, and Wojtyla loved the stage as a young student. They shared similar political philosophies, with strong convictions about the "ideologies of evil," including communism. And these "kindred spirits" were known for their constructive optimism despite the traumas and challenges they encountered on their road to the world stage. But how precisely did President Regan and John Paul II cooperate with each other in this common purpose? Reagan vigorously supported Poland's Solidarity Movement, calling for an end to the marital law that had been imposed on this "martyred nation" in the early 1980's. The partnership between President Reagan and John Paul II also included the exchange of classified intelligence. When Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power with promises of glasnost and perestroika, John Paul II and President Reagan seized the opportunity to convince him to unravel the oppressive Soviet system. The Divine Plan is a gripping historical account of these events, even though we all know how the story will end. The book's provocative thesis about the role of divine providence in the flow of historical events is well worth pondering. As John Paul II often said, "In the designs of Providence there are no mere coincidences." In Hegel's Vernunft in Geschichte, where history is defined as the manifestation of the Absolute Spirit, the author refers to the "cunning of reason" (List der Vernunft). While history is not determined in any direction, it is possible to speak about the cunning of providence that coalesces with the free will of heroic men like John Paul II and Ronald Reagan. Richard A. Spinello Boston College Richard A. Spinello Boston College Copyright © 2023 The Catholic University of America Press

Poland's Solidarity Movement and the Global Politics of Human Rights

In the Fall 2013 issue of the Journal of Cold War Studies, Robert Brier published an article “Broadening the Cultural History of the Cold War: The Emergence of the Polish Workers’ Defense Committee and the Rise of Human Rights,” which examined the emergence of a dissident movement in Communist-era Poland. Following a student uprising in Poland in March 1968 and the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August of that year, distinctive forms of opposition began to challenge the Communist monopoly of power in Poland. Inspired by Soviet dissenters, most notably Andrei Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Polish opposition activists also later appealed to the human rights agenda of the Helsinki Accords of 1975, which the Polish authorities had recognized by signing but failed to enact in practice.Poland's key opposition movements in the 1970s were the Workers’ Defense Committee (KOR) and the Movement to Defend Human and Civil Rights (ROPCiO). Their aspirations were encouraged by the arrival of the Polish Pope, John Paul II, in 1979, though Brier contends that the pope's visit “may not have been as heroic as some accounts suggest” (p. 34). These were significant impulses for the creation of Solidarity, whose “Twenty-One Demands” articulated the agenda of human rights. Solidarity was temporarily accepted by the Communist authorities in the Gdańsk Agreement of August 1980, but after sixteen months of legality Solidarity was banned by martial law, and the human rights agenda was brutally suppressed.The world watched the Solidarity underground in the decade that followed. But, as Brier explains, international responses were often determined by domestic agendas. To West German Chancellor Willy Brandt—himself a former refugee from Nazi Germany—foreign policy was governed by lengthy time-horizons during which détente gradually unfolded through the evolution of intergovernmental relations. His Ostpolitik hence saw dissidents as promoting an unreasonable, or simply ignorant, view of history. Even so, Western officials began to extend their visits by meeting opposition figures and stopping at sites of popular remembrance, notably the tomb of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, a Polish priest murdered by secret police officers in 1984.The French left engaged in fierce debate from 1974—triggered by Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago—about the respective merits of Communism and Marxism. Brier argues that “the once dominant framework of the French Left—Marxism—collapsed completely” (p. 108), and in its place human rights became the principal concern. As the abstractions of “totalitarianism” were replaced by specific concerns for human rights, political prisoners and dissidents in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe became central figures. Left-wing intellectuals demanded that Communist rulers heed human rights and other universal norms they had endorsed at Helsinki. Rather than acknowledging Communist autocracy, they had to accept Solidarity's democratic principle that citizens should have a direct influence on public affairs. This was also the priority at home.U.S. debates on foreign policy were also driven by domesticity. In the 1970s, Democrats like Senator Henry Jackson began to use the language of human rights to reinforce the ideological differences between East and West and thereby “reclaim American virtue” (p. 128). But under Ronald Reagan's Republican presidency the target was extended from anti-Communist rhetoric to measures against any social system antagonistic toward the creativity of individual human beings. As Reagan dismantled some welfare policies and reduced the influence of trade unions, union leaders in the United States argued that Solidarity represented a human right that was under threat at home: freedom of association.Brier concludes that Solidarity became a “vessel” for the ideas and wishes of its supporters abroad. Its leaders, including “iconic figures” such as Lech Wałęsa, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, were harshly suppressed by the Communist regime and were lauded abroad as prisoners of conscience. Poland became a “canvas unto which West Europeans and Americans could project their own struggles” (p. 145). Brier does recognize their assistance in helping to keep Polish activists out of prison, providing funds to sustain their activity and nudging the Polish government toward the 1989 roundtable talks with the opposition. These were significant steps toward the end of Communism in Eastern Europe and of the Cold War, but Brier suggests their main impulse was domesticity rather than internationalism.His book is a contribution to the promising Cambridge University Press series “Human Rights in History,” which one hopes will explore these issues further. Not least are the dramatic changes of the post-1989 era, as political leaders in Poland and Hungary have moved to recentralize state power and limit, or indeed extinguish, the role of human rights-based opposition.

Civic and Uncivic Values in Poland: Value Transformation, Education, and Culture

Civic and Uncivic Values in Poland: Value Transformation, Education, and Culture

Poland's Solidarity Movement and the Global Politics of Human Rights. By Robert Brier. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 2021. xvi, 269 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $99.00, hard bound.

Poland's Solidarity Movement and the Global Politics of Human Rights. By Robert Brier. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 2021. xvi, 269 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $99.00, hard bound. - Volume 81 Issue 4

Humanism Under Siege: The Janus Face of the Modern Revolution of Dignity

The article interprets the crisis of liberal democracy in the 21st century as the result of an ongoing, dual revolution of dignity. One such revolution is the work of “humanist outliers”: small groups and individuals dedicated to compassionate social emancipation. Thus anti-authoritarian revolutions like that of Solidarity in Poland (1980–81) succeed in large part thanks to cultural and political innovations springing from the work of such small groups. However, the humanist revolution of dignity – featuring altruism and cooperation – has its “tribal doppelgänger”: a twin revolution that strives to reclaim national dignity and pride at the price of submission to authoritarian rule.

Experience of Solidarity in Poland under Communist Rule and Thereafter

Although Solidarność was the largest mass movement in the history of after-war Europe, the experience of solidarity during that time in communist Poland has barely been analysed. Drawing on historical accounts of the events in the 1980s and press interviews with Solidarność members, this paper attempts to bridge this gap and identifies key aspects of the experienced solidarity. It argues that the solidarity under communism in Poland derived not only from the common enemy – the communist party state – but was deeply rooted in Catholic social thought and the national identity. It was driven mainly by ideas of protection of human dignity, mutual aid, participation and a demand for “life in truth”. Since 2015, the new social policy has had initially positive impact on income inequality, birth rates and poverty but must be accompanied by further measures to obtain a long-term character.

Lithuania's Demarcation of Information from Poland's Solidarity Movement in 1980-1981

The aim of the article: Despite the fact that everything we know in Polish history about the emergence of Solidarity [Polish: Solidarność], Polish trade unions, in 1980-1981, and the conflict with the communist totalitarian regime is described in sources as ‘the Polish Crisis’, the question remains open about the contemporaneous deepening communication crisis of the communist government in Lithuania, whose history had long – until the middle of the 20th century – been very closely linked to the development of Poland. From 1951 to 1989, Lithuania was separated from Poland by a double barbed-wire Soviet border barrier without any border crossing points. Nevertheless, the author proposes delving into what type of information control measures the Soviet regime used in influencing the Lithuanian people by undermining their interest in the workers’ strikes and the expanding trade union movement in Poland 40 years ago, trying to set Lithuanians against Polish society, and also how the media in the West helped renew the dialogue between Lithuanian and Polish diaspora organisations. Research methods: The author performed a content analysis of KGB documents in the Lithuanian Special Archives and examined the content of the Lithuanian SSR mass media and the mass media of the Lithuanian diaspora in the United States. Results and conclusions: The Soviet concept of security that was implemented by the repressive structure of the KGB was largely associated with the restriction of information, censorship and self-censorship of the population. However, it was also associated with the recruitment of Lithuanian citizens into ongoing cooperation with the secret service to collect data about Polish people who were ‘disloyal’ to the regime and transfer information to the security service of communist Poland, so the content of these reports must be disclosed. Cognitive value: Thus, the article provides the broader context, in which the content of the propaganda press is only one element of the system that controlled the public space.

From Solidarity to ‘Shock Therapy’. British Foreign Policy Towards Poland Under the Thatcher Government, 1980–1990

The Polish crisis of 1980 and 1981 was one of the intermittent bouts of protest that erupted in the communist bloc during the Cold War. The Thatcher government recognised Poland as a vital crucible of the conflict and that the regime in the country was among the most vulnerable in the region. The limited measures the British offered to assist Solidarity in Poland were a result of the Thatcher government's own position as well as the underlying geopolitical reality at that time. The strategy that Britain progressively employed towards Poland during the rest of the decade, ultimately achieving its long-term objectives, was indicative of the thaw in superpower relations, the consolidation of Thatcherism at home and the march of neo-liberal ideas internationally.

The Catholic Church and the Ethic of Solidarity in Poland After 1989: An Update

Abstract In spite of impressive economic growth and a burgeoning middle class in recent years, millions of Poles continue to suffer from poverty. Entrenched poverty and marginalization reveal that Polish society needs a revitalization of the ethic of solidarity, which largely disintegrated after 1989. The Roman Catholic Church should play a pivotal role in this endeavor. Promoting an ethic of solidarity is an intrinsic component of the Catholic Church’s mission of evangelization. Although the Church has advanced an ethic of solidarity in some ways, it has also hindered the fostering of greater social solidarity. In part, this stems from a failure of many Catholics, including Church leaders, to see advancing an ethic of solidarity as an integral dimension of evangelization.

Neoliberalism, Exogenous Elites and the Transformation of Solidarity

In late 1989, Poland's Solidarity( Solidarnośc )-led government took charge of a deteriorating economy and opted for a radical programme of neoliberal market reform. In many ways, this programme be...

Anna Walentynowicz and the Legacy of Solidarity in Poland

The Polish historian Sławomir Cenckiewicz, formerly of the Institute of National Memory, has produced a book discussing the life and impact of Anna Walentynowicz, whose dismissal from the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk in early August 1980, five months before she was scheduled to retire, became the catalyst for the formation of Solidarity. The appendices to Cenckiewicz's book consist of more than 300 densely printed pages of crucial documents from the former state security archives, and these make the volume worthwhile. As a biography, the book has notable shortcomings, in part because it contains a good deal of extraneous material and fails to discuss numerous parts of Walentynowicz's life. Even so, Cenckiewicz does successfully capture some aspects of Walentynowicz's character and activities. In time, better books about Walentynowicz will appear, but Cenckiewicz's volume will be an important source for future biographers.

“TAKING ONE'S PART IN THE REVOLUTION”: A COMPARISON OF WOMEN'S LABOR AS TOOLS OF REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE IN FRANCE, VIET NAM, AND POLAND

This article assesses three events that traditionally highlight the labors of men, but which demonstrate the integral roles played by women's labor: the 1871 Paris Commune, Viet Nam's American War during the 1960s and early 1970s, and the rise of Poland's Solidarity during the 1980s. Arguing for increased and consistent attention to the hows and whys of women's participation in regime change and related warfare, this analysis exposes and compares gendered omissions in the customary narratives of these major events, revealing women's collective involvement in political upheavals and the warfare that can accompany them. This article argues that despite their obscured visibility, women nonetheless “took their place without begging for it,” demonstrating that women's collective labor contributed substantially to the maintenance, and potentially the outcome, of large‐scale political, military, and national actions.

The Problem of Lasting Change: Civil Society and the Colored Revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine

Abstract: Civil society played a vital role in the revolutions of Georgia and Ukraine, exemplified by the activism of the youth groups Kmara and Pora. As democratic reform has stalled, however, these groups have found themselves increasingly marginalized because of the reemergence of authoritarian practices and elites. Only the renewed inclusion of civil society can restore the democratization process. Keywords: civil society, democratization, protest, public sphere, social movements ********** Since the collape of the Soviet Union, popular mobilization has played a key part in effecting change in the post-Soviet states. The first instances were seen during the collapse of Soviet power in Eastern Europe, epitomized by the activism of Solidarity in Poland, but as post-Soviet states disappointed expectations of democratic change, such activism has been redirected at the successor regimes, often to great effect. The most recent events that fit this description have been generally referred to as the colored revolutions, arguably inaugurated with the electoral revolutions in Bulgaria (1996-97), Slovakia and Croatia (1998-99), and the nonviolent ouster of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia in 2000. (1) Partly inspired by the Serbian example, nonviolent regime changes occurred in Georgia in 2003 (the Rose Revolution), Ukraine in 2004-05 (the Orange Revolution), and Kyrgyzstan in 2005 (the Tulip Revolution). There were also unsuccessful attempts in Uzbekistan and Belarus in 2005 and 2006. These events have captured the attention and imagination of many international observers, who have speculated that the revolutions might represent the beginning of a new wave of democratization. This article's purpose is twofold. First, I examine the role of social movements and civil society in sparking the revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, focusing specifically on the activities of the youth groups Kmara (Enough) and Pora (It's Time). Most conventional accounts of the two revolutions focus primarily on the proximate causes (fraud, corruption, etc.) or the nature of the organized political opposition, spending less time on the strategies and tactics employed by civil society and social-movement actors. I will use new social movement theory to explore how these groups took advantage of political opportunities, acquired and used repertoires of contention, and interacted with conventional actors and the media. This requires examining how the post-Soviet period shaped the revolutions' political context. Second, I look at each revolution's aftermath to determine how successful each has been in promoting effective change. Both Georgia and Ukraine experienced problems with democratization because of the new regime's actions while in office (Georgia) or the resurgence of the previous authoritarian elites (Ukraine). It is important to account for these difficulties, and determine what role (if any) civil society has played in the post-colored revolution political environment. If accounts of the revolutions rely too heavily on analysis of the regime and the opposition, this interpretation is even more prevalent in postrevolution political developments. Does this empirical silence mean civil society is no longer seeking an active role in the political process or does it mean that the state is actively excluding civil society from playing such a role? Could it indicate that the revolutionary governments have effectively coopted civil society, absorbing it into political society? I aim to answer these questions to create a more complex picture of the type of change that has resulted from the revolutions. Theoretical Framework This article, and the theoretical framework that undergirds it, is divided into two parts--prerevolution and postrevolution. Examining the prerevolution situations in Georgia and Ukraine, I use the new social movement theory, as characterized by Sidney Tarrow's book Power in Movement, to provide a framework for understanding popular and political mobilization and how such mobilization can effect political change. …

Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: Challenges to Communist Rule

This collection of articles by an international group of historians, sociologists and political scientists offers an extremely useful introduction to recent research about the varieties of resistance and revolution that took place in eastern Europe after 1945. It is divided into three roughly chronological sections. The first section focuses on the Soviet-Yugoslav split of 1948, the East German uprising of June 1953, and the 1956 disturbances in Poland and Hungary. The second section looks at the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, the rise of Solidarity in Poland, and grass-roots resistance in Romania. The third section examines the series of ‘revolutions’ that rocked eastern Europe in the late 1980s and considers whether or not they deserve that appellation. Almost all of the essays in this volume combine narrative sketches of these major postwar ‘flashpoints’ with overviews of the most recent literature; approximately half present new archival evidence as well. But to what extent do they modify our image of key developments beyond the iron curtain, especially with respect to resistance against Soviet hegemony and communist rule? We now know, for example, that the roots of the 1948 rift between Moscow and Belgrade did not reach as far back in time as the Yugoslavs consistently maintained. According to Leonid Gibianskii, Tito remained a loyal and steadfast Soviet ally and did not incur Stalin's wrath until very shortly before the split was made public in March 1948.

‘Taunting the Bear’: Romania and the Warsaw Pact, 1963–89

Recently released documents from the Romanian military archives relating to Romania's stance within the Warsaw Pact permit a more refined view of Romania's autonomy within the Pact than has hitherto been possible. They show that the conventional assertion that Nicolae Ceauşescu refused to join the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 is misleading since he was not invited by the Soviet Union to participate in it. They reveal details of the pressure put on Romania by the Soviet Union after 1968 to toe the Warsaw Pact line, ranging from the imperious comments of General Shtemenko in February 1970 to a senior Romanian officer, to Brezhnev's accusation, levelled at Ceauşescu in person, that the latter intended to leave the Pact. Yet it was the direct challenge to Communist domination by Solidarity in Poland in 1981 that, as these documents show, led Ceauşescu to see the value of the Pact. By the summer of 1989, he had become the advocate of intervention in Poland in order to preserve Socialist solidarity and the cohesion of the Pact.

Preface

Preface Michael C. Jordan Political, social, and cultural developments in recent years have imparted a new sense of urgency to reflections on the changing relationship between faith and culture throughout the world. Those reflections at one stage focused on speculations concerning how culture would be reshaped when its religious foundations had been repudiated and eradicated. But in recent years we find terms such as "the death of the death of God" used in a book title by Jacob Neusner and "desecularization" in a book title by Peter Berger, and the questions in the foreground now pertain to the proper relationship between faith and cultural-political life in the face of the persistence of religious belief. The current state of such questions is anticipated aptly in a pair of lectures given by Malcolm Muggeridge in 1978: "The End of Christendom," and "But Not of Christ."1 Muggeridge offers a personal witness to the efforts in the twentieth century to destroy Christianity especially in the Soviet Union and presciently reports that those efforts in the Soviet Union had failed—and this before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the success of Solidarity in Poland, and the implosion of the Soviet regime and empire. It is not coincidental to the account given in these lectures that Muggeridge himself converted to Christianity and just a few years after delivering these lectures became a Catholic. [End Page 5] The end of Christendom in Muggeridge's terms indicates the collapse of a civilization in which Christianity is deeply entwined in the political, social, and cultural structures of power. He sees in the twentieth century a parallel to what St. Augustine encountered when faced with the collapse of Rome: the inevitable transience of historical civilizations in contrast to which the eternity that comes to light through Christianity shines out all the more clearly, as he envisions anew Augustine's distinction between the ephemeral City of Man and the everlasting City of God. Muggeridge in these essays offers witness to what he understands to be a great historical period of transition, and his reminder in the lectures that he speaks as a journalist and not as a scholar seems apt. His account imparts a personal character to the movement of history especially as he reports what he has witnessed of the failed effort in the Soviet Union to destroy Christianity and of the resurgence of Christian truth through the great figure of Solzhenitsyn as well as through his sense of moral and cultural decline in the West. To his credit, Muggeridge in the second essay, "But Not [the End] of Christ," recognizes the danger of egoism involved in crafting denunciations of the culture around him and applies self-restraint as he falls back upon the hope that flows from his own deeply held Christian faith. Muggeridge can be viewed in these lectures as establishing the ground for a new set of challenges that he himself does not fully address—at one moment he movingly speaks of himself as living in the vicinity of death (although he lived for another twelve years after delivering these lectures), and while he knows that Christ and Christianity will live on beyond what he sees as the end of Christendom, he does not ask what new relationships between Christianity and political and cultural life might emerge in a new historical period. Perhaps Muggeridge was not well prepared for such questions because in these lectures he focuses on Christ and on great Christian thinkers and artists such as Newman and Dostoevsky but does not bring into focus Christ's presence in the world through the Christian church. In any case, one measure of historical development [End Page 6] in the three decades since Muggeridge delivered these lectures is that new questions about how Christianity should participate in contemporary public and cultural affairs are being thoughtfully and energetically pursued. Among the many important initiatives in this area—and of course the Institute on Religion and Public Life and its journal, First Things, must be lauded in this context—is a new organization called "Theos: A Public Theology Think Tank," launched in November 2006 with the support of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and Cardinal...

What Happened to Socialism?

This rich and substantial history of the left was, as Geoff Eley explains in his preface, researched and written across the great divide of 1989-91, when Communism in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe collapsed. Social democracy also during this period, as Eley points out, found itself ideologically hollowed out, widely rejecting its eighty-year long aspiration to transform society. Instead, it came to terms with the necessity of capi talism, and settled for electoral survival and some mitigation of the insta bility and inequity of the market system. But while this decomposition of the earlier socialist project and its insti tutions was going on, new forms of democratic activity and challenge were emerging in European and indeed other societies. Eley identifies the strongest of these as feminism, but also includes 'anti-nuclear campaigning; environmental activism; peace movements; gay-lesbian movements and the wider politics of sexuality; local community politics; squatting and the creation of alternative scenes; left nationalist and regionalist movements; and, last but not least, antiracism ...' as movements which extend the boundaries of politics and democracy. These have had their revolutionary (or nearrevolutionary) moments in the great upsurges of 1968, among both students and workers. And also, in a different context, in the protest movements against Communist regimes which took place in Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), Poland (1980-81) and East Germany (1989). The earlier risings against these Stalinist states were still framed in reform-Communist terms. But Eley claims these democratic movements for the tradition of the left, even in the later years when socialist ways of thinking had become discredited in these countries and were no longer available to them as narratives of opposition, as they still were in 1956 and 1968. He describes the paradox (from this point of view) of Solidarity in Poland, perhaps the most wholly working-class revolutionary movement of any time, yet militantly hostile to the ideology of socialism as it had become. But not long after this in the mid 1980s, in a pattern of 'combined and uneven development', Mikhail Gorbachev set out to mobilize new demo cratic freedoms in the USSR to achieve what he came to see as a transition to social democracy, a project which however failed. In his book, Eley aims to link together these different phases and forms of democratic activity what we might think of as the socialist and the

A Carnival of Revolution. Central Europe, 1989 by Padraic Kenney (review)

720 Рецензии/Reviews barbaric countries (Pp. 198-199). The Soviet Union, however, only damaged those it colonized and thereby did not properly bear “the white men’s burden.” While every “good” country perpetually marches towards enlightenment , i.e., capitalism and democracy, “bad” Russia deviated and errantly built socialism (P. 237). Lieven does not question the goal of the march, or the worthiness of the collectivization of peoples into grand movements of historical marches, regardless of their goals. Furthermore, he does not define either socialism or capitalism nor does he question the Soviet type of socialism, compare contemporary socialist views, or explain the popularity of socialist ideologies in many recent elections. His readers are also left wondering why the collapse of the Soviet Union did not bring much relief to people in its aftermath and why capitalism does not ipso facto resolve the problems of poverty, corruption, and the alienation of social groups. While the objective of the publication is honorable, it lacks coordination and does not represent the full spectrum of new approaches. Russian students and teachers are overly familiar with the politics of new “interpretations” and “revisions .” What they need is good research methods and open forums for discussion and debate. Magdalena ŻÓŁKOŚ Padraic Kenney, A Carnival of Revolution. Central Europe, 1989. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. ISBN: 0-691-05028-7. 352 pр. The dissident movements that developed in post-war Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), as well as the intellectual and ideational currents that inspired them, have been recurrently highlighted and theorized upon as acts of independent social self-organization in the pursuit of achieving public freedom and ethically informed politics under autho-ritarian communist regimes. Most of those studies, however, reflect similar patterns of analysis and focus on opposition activities subsequent to the Prague Spring in 1968 (associated with the ultimate failure of attempts at reform), which took on novel forms of “anti-politics” and “new evolutionism” and which resulted in, inter alia, the formation of Solidarity in Poland and its unprecedented victory – brought to a halt with the introduction of martial law in 1981. Subsequently, there has been a striking lack of scholarly inte-rest in later forms of dissident expression. This has created the impression that the 1980s in CEE witnessed a prolonged impasse between the communist authorities 721 Ab Imperio, 4/2004 and a substantially weakened, underground , and uniform opposition. This impression, we learn from Padraic Kenney’s recent book, is erroneous and highly misleading. His A Carnival of Revolution tells a fascinating and thus far untold story of the “new generation” of dissidents that emerged in Poland , Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Ukraine, Slovenia, and the GDR in the post-Solidarity era. Taking the Bakhtinian notion of carnival as a point of departure, Kenney develops a picture of diverse and vibrant civic movements that emerged, but also distanced themselves from, the revisionist ethos of the 1970s, and remained critical of its hegemonic oppositional discourse and the “seriousness ” with which it addressed the communist regime. He labels them “carnival movement” and the “konkretny generation” (i.e., realist or pragmatic in contrast with the ideational dissidents of the 1970s). Kenney’s introductory thesis is that the changing international politics, economic failures, and intellectual activities in CEE will not suffice as explanatory factors of the 1989 revolutions unless placed in the context of the novel dynamics of dissidence of the “carnival movements ” that developed throughout the whole European communist region. Based on an impressive variety of sources (e.g., numerous interviews and samizdat and tamizdat publications in original languages), Kenney’s book consists of three main parts: (i) a detailed description and careful analysis of the pre-1989 “carnival movements” (P. ii) a “hoto essay” (a collection of pictures documenting opposition activities in 1988 and 1989) and (iii) a factual presentation of “16 scenes” from the final phases of regime change. Kenney’s book – with its multiplicity of actors, movements, and events - captures well the complexity and specificity of alternative dissidence. It also manages to picture its cross-border commonalities and analogies (with increased mobility and international contacts as two crucial characteristics ), and at the same time emphasizes the particular national contexts and predilections that determined different paths. (Thus...

Politics, Mortal and Natal: An Arendtian Rejoinder

Is there a that 'politics' makes unthinkable, the space outside the frame within which 'politics' appears and thus outside the conflicting visions that share as their presupposition that the 'body politic' must survive (Post-Partum 181)? What is that space? What would it mean to embrace or assume or embody the prevailing figuration of that space in order to disturb or refuse the political realm as such? Having reflected on Lee Edelman's carefully argued response to my criticism of Future Is Kid Stuff, I think that the salient issues of contention between us lie in our respective responses to these questions. There are indeed spaces outside the political realm. The form they take varies according to the nature of the political order. In Eastern Europe under communist rule, for example, there emerged a signifi cant refusal of politics. The Hungarian writer George Konrad called it anti-politics. Communist states, particularly after the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian uprising, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the suppression of Solidarity in Poland, denied all avenues for citizens to organize or express themselves within the political sphere. Moreover, the mechanisms of one-party rule made every facet of life political by ex erting control over intellectual and artistic life, public opinion, even individuals' choice of occupation and housing and their freedom of movement. The repression of conflict within the political realm went hand-in-hand with the omnipresent reach of politics into the nonpolitical realm. Citizens could counteract the omnipresence of the state, Konrad argued, only by refusing politics and devoting their minds and ac tivities to whatever remaining spaces eluded the reach of the state (see Konrad's Anti-Politics). This withdrawal from politics was painful, precarious, and risky, but had unexpected political effects; the anti-political citizens contributed to the eventual

Defining foreign social movements

The recurring tendencies in the American news media's coverage of foreign social movements illustrate the interaction between journalism and social change. By examining how the media defined Poland's Solidarity trade union movement, Czechoslovakia's Civic Forum, and East Germany's New Forum, I will identify the ideological meanings and values conveyed by the coverage of these movements, all of which significantly affected the political and social transformation of Eastern Europe.