Table Negotiations Research Articles

Constitutional reforms in Poland after 7 April 1989

The political events of the late 1980s, as well as the results of the Round Table negotiations, needed their formal confirmation in the Constitution in order to secure their durability. During the political transformation in the years 1989–1991, there were seven amendments of the Constitution of 1952 adopted, out of which the first two were particularly important. The first amendment of April 1989 restored, among others, the office of the President as a head of state and the Senate, as well as established the National Council of the Judiciary as the body protecting independent courts and judges. The second amendment of December 1989 introduced the fundamental principles such as a democratic state ruled by law, social justice, political pluralism, freedom of economic activity and property protection. The current Constitution of 1997 has been amended only twice – in 2006 in regard to the extradition of a Polish citizen (art. 55 par. 3) and in 2009 in regard to passive electoral rights (art. 99 par. 3). As shown by the political experience after 2015, the procedure for adopting the amendment to the Constitution set out in art. 235 is extremely difficult, which has led to a situation in which it is bypassed and the content of constitutional provisions is changed by ordinary provisions.

1989: «Great Turning Point» or «Rotten Compromise». Poles' Memory of the Collapse of the Communist System

The article discusses the events in Poland of 1989, specifically of the Round Table Negotiations and the elections of June the 4th 1989. A short overview of the 1980s that led to the fall of communist regime is presented, and main representatives of historiographic production devoted to this topic are laid out, with some controversies as well. Much attention is devoted to variations of memory of that events. The division of political scenery today runs mostly along the same lines which divide different memories of 1989.

On the deliberative initiation of macro-social change: The case of the round table negotiations in poland from the perspective of a participant

The Round Table (RT) Talks in Poland in February-April 1989 initiated rapid transition from an authoritarian political system and a centralized, state-controlled economy to democratic capitalism. They also triggered a cascade of changes across the whole of Eastern Europe (the former Soviet block). In this paper I analyze the psychological factors that contributed to success of the talks. During the RT talks, the representatives of the ruling party in Poland („communists”) negotiated with the representatives of „Solidarity” (“democratic opposition”) - the very broad socio-political movement representing Polish aspirations to democracy and sovereignty, separate from the Soviet Union. The paper describes the organization of the negotiations (a complex structure with about 700 participants) and the sources of an initial deep antagonism between the two sides. It addresses the main psychological factors that made it possible for this antagonism to be overcome and for the development of an agreed plan to democratize the Polish political system. This includes an analysis of: the general approach to negotiations; the initial definitions of the negotiating situation and the ways in which these definitions changed; the psychological characteristics of the negotiating situation which fostered cooperative attitudes amongst the negotiations, including in particular the role of group forces. The paper also discusses more generally the relationship between psychological factors and objective conditions in achieving (or impeding) positive outcomes to negotiations around entrenched, seemingly untractable, political conflicts.

Moving beyond the past: The role of historical closure in conflict resolution

This article discusses the role of historical closure in conflict resolution and reconciliation, departing from the example of the Polish Round Table negotiations in 1989. The concept of a “thick line” (“Gruba kreska” or “Schlussstrich”) was used in several historical contexts, showing the intention to detach from history when resolving pressing current societal issues. Historical evidence suggests that it was an intentionally chosen strategy by both sides taking part in the Round Table negotiations in 1989. Historical closure is known to have good consequences for building mutual trust, improving attitudes and making contact interventions more effective in improving intergroup relations. This is mostly attributed to the fact that historical crimes can have a long-standing impact on intergroup relations: past victimhood and perpetratorship lead to current grievances, denial, and mistrust. Only when these historical roles are overcome can both parties achieve any agreement. At the same time, historical closure breeds a sense of injustice among political followers and gives birth to numerous conspiracy theories. This article analyzes these problems in the Polish context and beyond.

Remaking history and remaking psychology: On the contributions of Janusz Reykowski and Janusz Grzelak to the Polish Round Table negotiations

In this introductory piece to the special issue, I seek to establish the importance of the topic under discussion: that is, the psychology of the 1989 Polish Round Table Talks. I start by underlining the unique opportunity to gain insight into this topic given that two of the main protagonists, Janusz Reykowski on the Government side and Janusz Grzelak on the Solidarity side, are social psychologists. Next, I argue for both the world-historical significance of the Round Table Talks and for the necessity of a psychological dimension to the analysis of what happened. I then address what Psychology provides for an understanding of the Round Table process and what the Round Table process contributes to an understanding of Psychology. Specifically, this turns on the need for a more complex and historical conceptualisation of intergroup relations in which the very nature of the groups in relation may be transformed. I conclude by pointing to further research opportunities on this key question of the configuration and reconfiguration of social groups.

Turning points at the Round Table Talks

At the beginning of the 1990s the “winds of change” blew through Europe, leading to the fall of Communism and regime change in several Eastern-European countries. The domino effect started in Poland with the Round Table negotiations that ultimately led to democratization of the country. The context that allowed this historical event to occur has been studied, but the talks themselves have not been analyzed in detail. In this article, we undertake this task. Using several complementary analytical approaches – negotiation theory, turning points analysis and dynamical systems – we study the process of getting to an agreement, focusing on the seven key issues of the negotiations. We treat the Round Table Talks both as a unique case of negotiations, given its structure and the context in which it happened, as well as an event comparable to other negotiations and connecting to the broader negotiation literature. Results of our inquiries show the importance of procedures during the talks and highlight the role played by motivation in propelling the negotiating parties to an agreement. We discuss the implications of our findings for negotiation theory and for the broader context of the historical event.

Prawo o stowarzyszeniach w aktualnych uwarunkowaniach społecznych i prawnych. Z doświadczeń prac nad projektem nowelizacji w latach 2009–2015

On the 25th of September, 2015 the Polish Parliament adopted the act amending the 1989 Act on Associations. Though there had been eight subsequent amendments, the 2015 act was the first aiming to substantially adapt the Act on Associations – the first legal effect of the political consensus achieved within the Round Table negotiations of the then Communist government and the “democratic opposition” – to new social and economic conditions of Poland. 26 years of functioning of the Act have been the time of passage from “real socialism” to “democratic state of law” having to base, according to the 1997 Constitution, on “social market economy”, and from a practical isolation of Poland within its borders to its opening to the world, in particular within the framework of European institutions. The article sketches, also on the basis of the author’s personal experience due to his participation in drafting and legislative works, the course of the revision works initiated in 2009, in particular of parliamentary works on the 2014 President’s draft law, as well as their limited results achieved in the 2015 act. Analyses of causes of such limitation are presented on the plane of the most important items of the pre- -parliamentary and parliamentary debates, i.e. right of legal persons to associate on equal terms with physical persons (not included in the President’s proposal), right of foreigners to associate on equal terms with citizens (and inhabitants) of Poland (its application had been proposed by the President, but not included in the act), and legal effect of the, generally agreed, elevation of the status of “ordinary association” on functioning of the present ordinary associations that would not wish to become new ordinary associations; the latter question relates to the fundamental issue of the sense of the freedom of association.

Book review: From Solidarity to Sell Out: The Restoration of Capitalism in Poland, by Tadeusz Kowalik

From Solidarity to Sell Out: The Restoration of Capitalism in Poland, Monthly Review Press: New York, 2012; 270 pp: 9781583672969, 15.95 [pounds sterling] (pbk) The starting point of this review must be to acknowledge the intellectual and political stature of the author--the, respected prolific Polish economist Tadeusz Kowalik, who died in 2012. His lifetime spanned dramatic and panoramic changes in Polish history. He was born in 1926, eight years after the restoration of an independent Polish state; lived through the Great Depression; saw the imposition of communism and the Stalinisation of Poland in the post-Second World War settlement; and was an active participant in the so-called transformation process from 1990 onwards. Kowalik was associated with a group of renowned Polish economists such as Oskar Lange, Wlodzimierz Brus, Edward Lipifiski and Michal Kalecki, who were active in proposing economic reforms for the Polish system in the 1950s and 1960s, and whose theoretical work inspired current neo-Keynesian thinking. Kowalik was a persistent but engaged critic of the communist regime, and from the 1950s onwards, had argued in favour of an economy based on the self-management of workers, which had a long tradition in Poland. As part of a general purge of oppositionist intellectuals in 1968, he was eventually expelled from the Communist Party, and from this point onwards became part of a growing opposition movement. For example, he was a member of the Workers Defence League (KOR) with Jacek Kuron and Karol Modzelewski, authors of the pivotal 'Open Letter to the Party' in 1965, which criticised the bureaucratic class and argued in favour of workers' democracy. In the huge upheavals of 1980-1, he supported the demands of the Gdansk shipyard workers, and was an advisor to the Solidarity trade union and political party. The key question posed by the book is evident from its title. Namely, how did a country that in 1980-1 had one of the, if not the largest workers' movements in history, renowned for its widespread factory occupations in support of radical economic and political demands, go on to experience the imposition of the most ferocious 'shock therapy' underpinned by the most extreme form of neoliberalism only a decade later. Kowalik questions the outcomes of transformation, not by the yardstick of conventional economists (competitiveness), but in terms of the misery that was heaped on large sections of the population. He argues that an idealised myth of the market was adopted with the crude formula of 'commercialise, privatise and deregulate' in the shortest possible period, and at great cost to ordinary people. According to Kowalik, the round table negotiations between representatives of the ruling Communist Party and the opposition (February to April 1989) were the critical juncture between two versions of capitalism. The first version was a co-operative social democratic model underpinned by the principle of workers' self-management and full employment, akin to the Swedish model. The second version, which prevailed and underpinned 'shock therapy', was the Anglo-Saxon model of market-based capitalism, where the high human cost in terms of unemployment was deemed to be the medicine necessary for a sclerotic economy. Kowalik argues that the acceptance of the 'leap to the market' model was eased politically by the transformation of Solidarity in the previous decade from a 10-million strong democratic mass workers' movement to a small, unaccountable committee where co-option was the order of the day. Four chapters in the book are dedicated to the question of ownership and privatisation. Accounts of debates during the 1980s are discussed, and the inclusion of the deliberations of the Krakow Congress of Polish Economists of 1987 gives a flavour of the level of detail of the narrative. Further, debates about the political strategy of privatisation are situated in an extensive discussion on property rights theories. …

The Breakthrough: Polish elections in June 1989

History needs a broad perspective and it is most clear when aided by hindsight and long distance. The 20 years that have just passed since the memorable June of 1989 provide a most useful platform for assessing the historical importance of the three events in Poland that constituted the political 'Breakthrough': the round table negotiations in February- April 1989, the 'contract' parliamentary elections in June, and the formation of the Solidarity government in September 1989 - the first non-communist government in the Soviet Bloc. Together, in a spiralling and self-reinforcing political sequence, they formed a 'Breakthrough', that is, a threefold shift: for Solidarity, a shift from (predominantly moral) opposition to (politically constructive) affirmation; for Polish political leaders, a shift from reforms of the communist system to systemic transformation 'out of the system'; and for Eastern Europe, a shift from dissent to a phase of institutional change into 'post-communism'. In other words, the three events, as claimed here, played a crucial role in accelerating and radicalising the 'internal' socio-political developments in Poland - transforming Solidarity opposition into Solidarity government - and 'externally', in the entire region, by starting a political 'contagion' that led to the domino-like collapse of communist regimes all over Eastern Europe. The Breakthrough itself, as argued in the Introduction and by this author elsewhere in this volume (Chapter 6), has to be historically 'embedded'. For a start, it has to be seen within the historical sequence of events that generated the annus mirabilis in Europe: the economic crisis of Soviet-type socialism as reflected in deepening economic woes and widening political dissent; the evolution of social protests and upheavals, especially under the impact of 'cumulative learning' and influential appeals of the Polish Pope, both pushing the communist authorities to negotiations with the democratic opposition; Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost, which gave an 'amber light' of cautious approval to all Eastern European reformists; the accompanying climate of WestEast detente that enabled the largely peaceful transformations; and, last but not least, the mass media revolution and the 'global village' effect that facilitated the political contagion. This broader historical framework is outlined in more detail in Chapter 6 of this volume. Here, we look only at key events in Poland most directly linked with, and leading to, the Solidarity-engineered Breakthrough, as well as the impact of this Breakthrough on developments in the region. The Background The round table has a relatively short history. While the very idea of negotiated conflict resolution and political compromise was popular in opposition circles in the 1970s and 1980s, and had already been applied during the negotiations in August- September 1980 that led to the formation of Solidarity, the label itself was popularised by General Jaruzelski in mid-1988, when he proposed reconciliation talks aimed at defusing the mounting social unrest caused by the failure of martial law to 'close the Solidarity chapter'. Attempts at reforming the ailing Polish economy 'from above', without a broader social compact, proved unsuccessful, and, by the late 1980s, the communist authorities started to realise that negotiations with the opposition were unavoidable. This realisation was also prompted by a new political climate created by Gorbachev's reforms and the accompanying climate of detente with the West. The unexpected developments in Moscow were initially treated with suspicion. But the sceptics were proven wrong, in particular after Gorbachev's tolerant treatment of Soviet dissenters, especially Sakharov; his unexpected renunciation of 'Brezhnev's Doctrine' at the UN forum in 1988; and his friendly gestures towards the West. Even the harshest sceptics in Poland changed their views after Gorbachev's friendly meetings with opposition intellectuals during his visit to Poland in summer 1988, in the midst of the second strike wave that prompted General Jaruzelski to offer round table talks. …

The ‘Cooperative’ Mode of Dismantling Communism: From groundbreaking to ordinary

Introduction Developments in Poland in January- June 1989 set the stage for the final breakdown of the Soviet hegemony in Europe, whereas the launching of the Balcerowicz stabilisation-cum-transformation program paved the way for establishing foundations for competitive markets in Poland and other postcommunist countries. Three historic events, each overshadowing the earlier one, heralded the change: 1) the decision of the Polish Communist Party in January to start round table negotiations with Solidarity, which amounted to formal recognition of the opposition by the communist government; 2) signing of the round table agreements on 5 April that outlined a series of measures to assure an orderly transition to democracy; and 3) limited free elections held on 4 June. Their combined outcome was the emergence of the first government with a non-communist prime minister in Central Europe since the communist takeovers in 1948-49. Yet, Poland's lead in political change quickly evaporated as other post-communist countries held free elections and subsequently moved faster to dismantle vestiges of communism in both polity and economy. Twenty years after the demise of communism, Poland lags behind some of its Central European counterparts. The quality of democracy in Poland leaves much to be desired when assessed against states such as the Czech Republic, Estonia and Slovenia, hereafter referred to as the Luxembourg group (which also includes Hungary).1 In the 2000s, various international rankings of the quality of democracy rather consistently placed Poland at the bottom of the Luxembourg group as well as behind Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia but still above Bulgaria and Romania. In 2009, the ranking of Poland improved to the level of Hungary - above Latvia and Slovakia - but was still below the Czech Republic and Slovenia.2 Simultaneously, Poland's initially rapid economic growth performance ceased to shine; an impressive resistance to the world economic slowdown in 2008-09 appears to be the result of the failure to fully take advantage of the unprecedented world economic boom in 2000-07 rather than the quality of its institutions and policies. While we do not offer an unambiguous answer as to why Poland ceased to be a leader in political transition, a plausible explanation is likely to be associated with the uniqueness of Poland's mode of dismantling communism leading to a 'pacted' transition of the type described by O'Donnell and Schmitter.3 In contrast with other Central European post-communist countries, in Poland, gradualism - then justified in terms of dealing with uncertainty concerning Soviet reaction as well as in terms of buying the support of communists opposed to negotiations with Solidarity - characterised the political transition. The arrangements that allowed the communist establishment to stay in power, combined with divisions and fratricidal struggles within Solidarity, have crowded out from the political agenda the much more important issue of designing the constitutional underpinnings for a democratic society and state. Narrow interest groups championed procedural designs that could give them an upper hand in political struggles but had no interest in a serious constitutional debate. Similarly, the pacted transition with safeguards for the communist establishment impeded the emergence of high-quality democratic institutions. This political gradualism has contrasted rather sharply with Poland's radical approach to the dismantling of central planning and its rapid transition to an open market economy. Thus, as we show in this chapter, Poland's economic performance appears to have been superior to its political one, although it was inferior in the 2000s to most of other new 2004 EU members despite the world economic slowdown in 2008. Quality of Democracy and Institutional Design in Comparative Perspective Since the collapse of communism, which has highlighted the importance of institutions and political arrangements for economic growth and prosperity, the 'quality of democracy' has regularly been the subject of international surveys. …

Vertical Sovereignty, Horizontal Constitutionalism, Subterranean Capitalism: A Case of Competing Rertroactivities

This article engages with Andrew Arato’s post-sovereign model of constitution-making. It does so with specific reference to Arato’s claim that the South African constitutionmaking process constituted a ‘perfection’ of the post-sovereign model. It investigates this claim against the background of sceptical perspectives on the South African constitutionmaking process, especially those perspectives that view the South African transition and constitution-making process as more an outcome of a deal between the Apartheid Business Elite and the ANC leadership than of the round table negotiations that Arato takes as the heart of the post-sovereign process. The article ultimately defends Arato’s claim with recourse to a Kelsenian contention which takes the impure origins of all law for granted, and recognises the need to fictionalise or presuppose pure foundations for the sake of entertaining the possibility of new law, and law as such.

The fog of Hungary's negotiated revolution

This contribution uses the question of the presidency of the republic, the most divisive and consequential issue of Hungary's round table negotiations of 1989, to explore the process rather than the outcome of ‘negotiated revolution’. Political debate is necessarily something other than the exchange of reasoned argument. But the clear contrast between the bi-polar political divide within the Opposition Round Table (ORT) and their multifaceted and sometimes inconsistent lines of argument over policy suggests that, on this contentious issue at least, politicking was at least as important as politics.

The Influence of External Factors on the Process of Transformation in Poland. The Case of the Polish Presidential Elections of 1989

In the first half of 2001 the US Department of State, following a request from the National Security Archive (a US non-governmental organisation), declassified documents relating to the Round Table negotiations, the presidential elections, the crisis over choice of a prime minister and the creation of government (coalition) in Poland in 1989. Those documents, highly confidential until their release, allow us to look at the most important events in the transformation in Poland from a different perspective, which has not yet been extensively analysed. In essence, they indicate the role of external factors which have influenced the political situation of Poland – the transformation and actual decomposition of communism. They include cables detailing the US embassy’s participation in, and its analysis of the events during Poland’s ‘revolution’.

Nation, State, Europe and national revival in Hungarian party politics: the case of the millennial commemorations

POST-COMMUNIST TRANSFORMATION CONFRONTS all countries involved with questions of state redefinition. The strains that can be generated by these questions have been most evident, and most examined, in states newly emerged from the Czechoslovak, Soviet or Yugoslav federations and/or those with significant ethnic minorities. However, even in relatively old and ethnically homogeneous states, these issues cannot be tackled without engaging varying understandings of the national identity and the relationship between state and nation.! This article investigates the conceptions of the nature and purpose of the state presented by party political elites in one such state, Hungary. Hungary's relative ethnic homogeneity means that there has been no significant practical contestation about which national group the post-communist state is 'of and for', in Brubaker's terms.2 That is, questions have not arisen about public language use, for example (as between the language of the state's titular nationality and another, minority, national group), as has occurred in several other post-communist countries with larger and less assimilated minorities. Similarly, Hungary's well-established status has obviated any need to excavate a little-known national past to legitimate the state's existence. As then Prime Minister Viktor Orbtin commented in 1999, Hungarians could 'forget the word, invent Hungary. Hungary was invented quite well enough a thousand years ago, by St Stephen himself'.3 However, a 'national question' has consistently been identified as the single dominant dimension of the country's post-communist party competition.4 Partly, this dimension comprises familiar left-right differences over secularism and progressivism versus religiosity and cultural and social traditionalism. However, in the Hungarian context, as in many others, these differences also encompass divergent understandings of the national identity and of the nature and value of nationhood in general." In this respect, elite political competition since 1990 in part continues a central debate of modem Hungarian political and intellectual life, about what the Hungarian nation is and what its relationship to the Hungarian state should be.6 Prior to the 1920 Treaty of Trianon this debate indeed partly concerned the relationship between Hungarians, groups by then identified as being of other nationalities, and the Hungarian state. Since the

The Roundtable Talks of 1989: The Genesis of Hungarian Democracy (Analysis and Documents) by András s> Bozóki (review)

772 SEER, 8 I, 4, 2003 beloved by journalists during the I990S of blaming all Slovakia's woes on Meciar and what is sometimes dubbed the country's backward culture. Instead she provides an account of internal Slovak politics which highlights such factors as the lack of qualified personnel in the ministries, the rapidly draftedconstitution, differentdegrees of development in Slovakia'sregions, a Bratislava-basedelite unable to build bridgeswith the mass Slovakpublic and the salience of the national issue over the usual left-right political cleavage. Moreover, she stressesthe importance of Slovakdomestic politics in deciding the country'schances of foreignpolicy success. Two criticisms deserve to be levelled at the book. Firstly, the lack of a conclusion drawing together the book's many insights and venturing some projectionsfor Slovakia'sfuture.(The book stopsratherabruptlyat the end of the concise chapter on economics.) The second criticism should be levelled not at the author, but the publisher. Given the target marketfor the book is described in the front cover as 'studentsof East Central Europe, EU eastern enlargement and post-communist democratisation', one wonders how many sales Routledge imagines it will generate when a 40-page book is priced at no less than ?5o? The book's fate, therefore, is to be condemned to dusty university library shelves, which is a shame, because Henderson's excellent book deservesto have as wide an audience as possible. CREES T. HAUGHTON University ofBirmingham Bozoki, Andras (ed.). T7he RoundtableTalks of 1989. The Genesisof Hungarian Democracy(Analysis and Documents).Central European University Press, Budapest, 2002. xxxiv + 409 pp. Notes. Tables. Appendices. Bibliography .Index. ?39.95. HISTORY matters in Central and Eastern Europe. Given the ideological permeation of history-writingin the Communist era, historians have been particularlybusy since the inaugurationof regime change. Re-examination of the (if with significant exceptions) sterile, mechanistic 'Marxist-Leninist' understandingof historyserveda variety of needs. Among othersit reopened scholarly dialogue, it provided the basis for new school textbooks, while the need to understand, assess, and 'come to terms with' the Communist period itselfbecame an importantelement of the processof 'decommunization'. At the same time history once again became an ideological plaything for politician-intellectuals,who invented and reinvented the past to mobilize the population on the basis of 'identity'or 'symbolic'politics. The most notorious example was provided 'pre-transition',in I986, by the infamous nationalist Memorandum of the SerbianAcademy of Science. This was not to remain an isolated instance, nor was the political use of history restrictedto nationalist intellectuals. Many of those who spearheaded the 'revolutions' of I989 also played a key role in the new politicalparties.They proved more than readyto rewritehistorytojustify and promote theirown politicalpersuasions. This is but one reason for the importanceof the unstintingeffortsof Andras Boz6ki and his team of scholars to document fully the Hungarian Round REVIEWS 773 Table of I989. Hungary and Poland constitute the two cases where round table negotiations between the establishment and the opposition were absolutely fundamental to the path and pattern of post-Communist transformation . Like the Polish Communists, the MSzMP, dominated from midI988 by its reform wing, sought democratization as a means to the perpetuation of Partypower. Unlike the Poles, with whom they held a series of personal consultations, Hungarian leaders were more realistic in their analysis and increasingly sensitive to the growing precariousness of their position. Indeed, the new 'pragmatic,reformist,more enlightened, skepticalcynical generation' (Bozoki and Karfacsony,p. 93) was essential to both the start and the process of negotiations. The party rapidly abandoned its early institutional preferences, including bicameralism. Yet it held on until quite late to the view that it could continue to govern through a coalition arrangementwith the historic parties or with the (subsequentelection victor) the Hungarian Democratic Forum (Klmmardiscusses changing MSzMP strategy,pp.4I-69). The Polish case is only partly documented, and one consequence was the early emergence of a variety of conspiracy theories about relations between Solidarity intellectuals and the regime. The Hungarian Round Table was similarlyan elite affair,with little informationmade availableto the public as to the course of the discussions.Boz6ki'swork ensuresthe wholesale lifting of this veil, for he has overseen the publication in Hungary of eight volumes of detailedprimarysourcematerial,includingminutesandtranscripts.This book in turnprovidesananalyticalsynthesisofvariousdimensionsoftheroundtable process by...

The solidarność spring?

Written in late 1988, this article summarizes research by a team of sociologists on the strikes in that year (especially in Gdansk) that eventually led to the Round Table negotiations. The young strikers are described as both continuing the Solidarity tradition and introducing new elements, such as their existential protest against the meaninglessness of daily life in the workplace. Pathos and play became weapons, and the strike community became an enclave of authenticity. The authors conclude that the young strikers, whether ultimately successful in achieving their stated goals or not, represented a new quality in the Polish opposition movement.

The Public and the Private: Introduction

The Marxist twentieth century has come to an end. It started long before the Bolshevik revolution. Its final hour can be established with precision: it came when the Round Table negotiations started in Warsaw, in March 1988. This meant that the idea of transferring power to the non-communist opposition had gained acceptance among Soviet leaders. This fact had consequences going far beyond narrow political concerns. Before it, many intellectuals could have claimed that, although a lot of evil had been done in the people's paradise, the basic idea was sound. They may have had problems in explaining sources of the evil, yet they managed to live with them. Now, no serious person can take this stand. It is evident that sources of the evil were in the architecture of the communist order and, probing deeper, in the theoretical design of this order. This proposition should compel us to rethink the basic issues of social order, to re-examine the institutional foundations of human