Discussion 1 and 2 Posts& Responses and Quiz by Saturday

6

From the End of Prosperity to the End of Communism, 1973–1991

The Berlin Wall, 1989. After weeks of protests, on

November 9, 1989, the border that divided East Germany

from the West was officially opened. Triumphant East

and West Germans climbed on top of the Berlin wall and

chiseled away pieces as souvenirs. The wall had fallen,

paving the way for German reunification.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.1 Politics in Communist Europe

Introduction

The changes that took place in Europe between 1945 and 1973 were astonishing: the division of the continent into a Communist East and a capitalist-democratic West, the definitive loss of empire, and the rapid economic growth and increase in overall prosperity experienced in Western Europe, to which the beginnings of unification contrib- uted. Those that would take place between 1973 and 1991 were equally and possibly more astonishing. Communist Europe would collapse and—with two exceptions, a minor one in Romania and a major one in Yugoslavia—would do so in an almost completely peace- ful way. Even the Soviet Union itself would disappear from the map. Western European economic growth would slow down dramatically, and the economy would be radically transformed, with major social and political consequences. The unification process would continue, embracing more countries and taking on new tasks.

6.1 Politics in Communist Europe

In the Soviet-dominated Communist bloc and in the Soviet Union itself, the late 20th century saw political developments that can only be described as earth shaking. In the satellite states, dissent reemerged and eventually triumphed. The Soviet Union expe- rienced a long era of stagnation followed by a brief period of attempted renewal before disappearing from the map altogether. By 1991, the Europe of the Cold War and the iron curtain that had come out of World War II ceased to exist.

Stagnation in the Soviet Union, 1964–1985

The peaceful removal of Nikita Khrushchev by his Russian Politburo (ruling party) col- leagues in 1964 was followed by a 20-year era historians have called the “era of stagna- tion.” Three different leaders, Leonid Brezhnev (1964–1982), Yuri Andropov (1982–1984) and Konstantin Chernenko (1984–1985), ruled during this period. The last two were ill for much of their time in power and little positive was accomplished during the entire period. It was symbolic that in 1980 the average age of Politburo members was 70.

During the first years of Brezhnev’s rule, there were some modest advances in higher education, health care, and steel production: In 1971, the Soviet Union produced more steel than the United States. However, the arms race seriously drained resources from consumer goods, which remained in short supply and of poor quality. During the 1970s, conditions deteriorated to such an extent that life expectancy fell (from 66 years to 63) and infant mortality rose, as did rates of accidents and suicides.

The failed invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, which lasted for 10 years before troops were finally withdrawn, only worsened the situation. The Soviets imposed a Communist gov- ernment but were then faced with determined resistance from religiously inspired guer- rilla forces known as mujahideen. These received significant assistance from the United States, which saw the Afghan conflict as another Cold War proxy war. The Soviet with- drawal in 1989 was followed by a period of conflict among resistance groups that led to the coming to power of the Taliban in 1996.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.1 Politics in Communist Europe

Cynicism that conditions would ever improve in the Soviet Union increased among the general population, and it was said that the official party newspaper Pravda (which means Truth) “lies in such a devious way that even the opposite isn’t true” (Gilbert & Large, 2002, p. 520). It was a common joke (referring to the impact of lack of incentives upon work) that “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us” (Paxton, 2005, p. 609). Alcoholism, a long-standing problem in Russia, got significantly worse toward the end of the Brezhnev era with sales of vodka tripling between 1979 and 1982. In fact, oil and vodka were the only forms of production not in decline during the 1980s.

Brezhnev’s death was followed by very short periods of rule by Andropov, a former head of the secret police, and Chernenko, a long-time bureaucrat, who were 68 and 73, respectively, when they took power. Andropov called for reforms, including a partial decen- tralization of economic policy and increased political participation, and he fired some bureaucratic deadwood, but then he suffered a heart attack and was sick for the final 8 months of his 16-month reign. Chernenko was similarly incapacitated throughout virtually his entire rule and spent most of his time either hospitalized or resting before dying after a year in power.

Mikhail Gorbachev and the Era of Glasnost and Perestroika

Mikhail Gorbachev was chosen to be the Soviet leader following Chernenko’s death in 1985. The first party leader born after the Russian Revolution and the first to begin his career after Stalin’s death, his accession to power was like a breath of fresh air. He exuded confidence, flexibility and movement, a sense of restless energy and open-mindedness, as well as a rare ability to connect with ordinary citizens. He also understood clearly that the Soviet Union was falling further and further behind the West and that sooner or later this would be reflected in social unrest. Throughout his five years in office, Gorbachev’s watchwords were glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (restructuring), terms meant to convey that the Soviet Union needed serious reforms both in the manner in which it con- ducted itself and in the resultant outcomes.

Not everything Gorbachev touched turned to gold. His campaign against alcoholism failed to curb that plague of Russian society—his attempts to reduce state alcohol outlets led to a massive increase in illegal home brewing of vodka. Gorbachev also inherited a period of environmental degradation in the Soviet Union that was reflected in the explo- sion of a nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in the Ukraine on April 26, 1986. That disaster,

Afghan mujahideen stand on a destroyed Russian helicopter. These guerrilla fighters forced the Soviets to withdraw after 10 years. The United States provided assistance to these groups resisting the Soviet invasion even though some were religious fundamentalists.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.1 Politics in Communist Europe

the worst nuclear accident in history until the series of meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai- ichi plant in Japan in 2011, killed 31 people and forced the evacuation of another 300,000.

However, Gorbachev succeeded notably in shining a light into the corners of Soviet life and, without ceding the Communist Party’s political monopoly, he made great strides in tolerating and even encouraging dissent. He defined glasnost as demanding “more open- ness about public affairs in every sphere of life. Truth is the main thing. Lenin had said, ‘More light! Let the public know everything.’ As never before, we need no dark corners

where mold can reappear” (Gilbert & Large, 2002, p. 524). More light was especially shone on the crimes of the Stalin era. Thousands of Sta- lin’s victims were “rehabilitated,” and dissidents like Andrei Sakha- rov were released from prison or internal exile and encouraged to resume their roles in public life. The jamming of foreign radio sta- tions also ended.

Gorbachev’s perestroika campaign was designed to allow the Soviet Union to fully compete with the West, with the goal, as he put it, of allowing the “Soviet Union to

enter the new millennium in a manner worthy of a great and prosperous power” (Gilbert & Large, 2002, p. 527). In practice this meant economic change: a considerable trimming back of centralized economic planning and a general opening of Russia to foreign trade and investment, including Western consumer goods. Gorbachev called for more and bet- ter consumer goods and more hard work and support from the population, noting that “A house can be put in order only by a person who feels he is the owner” (Mason, 2011, p. 184).

By the late 1980s, Gorbachev was encountering resistance, however, from both reformers and hardliners. The former demanded greater and quicker democratization and fuller introduction of market economics, while the latter—among them bureaucrats who feared losing power and ordinary citizens who feared losing the assured welfare state benefits of full employment and subsidized and controlled prices—responded to the new initia- tives with both inertia and active resistance. While the black market flourished, providing goods that consumers wanted, inertia and resistance in the state-owned economy were so strong that, overall, consumers were actually worse off under Gorbachev than before. Labor productivity stagnated, dropping to one-fifth the Western level during the 1980s, and Russia especially fell behind the West in technology: As late as 1987 only six long- distance calls could be received simultaneously in Moscow (Berend, 2006, p. 31).

Elections were held in 1989, and for the first time in decades non-Communists were allowed to run, as were Communist challengers to sitting incumbents. Many voters cast ballots for such candidates, and the result was a parliament that generally assailed Gor- bachev for moving too slowly in reforming the nation, a development underlined by widespread strikes in the coal industry. By 1989, Gorbachev was increasingly portrayed

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev receives an ecstatic welcome in Prague during a visit in 1987.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.1 Politics in Communist Europe

as the proverbial “sorcerer’s apprentice” who had unleashed a movement for reform that he could no longer control.

Dissent in Eastern Europe, 1973–1989

The 1970s and 1980s in Eastern Europe saw a gradual reemergence of political dissent in the context of a general slowdown in economic growth amidst the worldwide 1973 reces- sion. It also saw gradually growing support for increased political freedoms, anti-Soviet nationalism, and better and more consumer products, along with the slow emergence of an underground civil society. The latter development received considerable encourage- ment from the 1975 Helsinki Accords, signed by the Soviet Union and 35 other European states, that promised “respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief.” Eastern European dissidents repeat- edly pointed to that provision in demanding an easing of political repression.

Long-standing discontent in Eastern Europe came to the surface with a rush in 1989, and the results were revolutionary. Within a six-month period Communist regimes fell in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. These changes in turn helped touch off the breakup of the Soviet Union into its 15 constituent republics in 1991. Altogether, the 1989–1991 developments brought about the greatest changes in European borders since World War I. In Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria, major reforms led to the deposition of the Communist Party monopoly through peaceful negotiations and elections in 1989, while in the rest of the Eastern European bloc Communist parties were deposed by unprecedented mass demonstrations that same year. British historian Timothy Garton Ash, who witnessed many of these events, coined the term “refolution” to describe Eastern Europe’s combination of reform and revolution:

There was a strong and essential element of change ‘from above’ led by an enlightened minority in the still ruling communist parties. But there was also a vital element of popular pressure ‘from below.’ . . . The interaction was, however, largely mediated by negotiations between ruling and oppo- sition elites.” (Garton Ash, 1990, p. 14)

Everywhere the process was extraordinarily peaceful, save in Romania, where the old guard briefly responded with a spasm of violence, and Yugoslavia where a delayed democratization process triggered a series of violent civil wars that tore the country apart during the 1990s (see next chapter).

Reform processes everywhere received essential encouragement from Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union, and especially from his indication that he would not inter- fere with democratic movements in Eastern Europe. In December 1988 he gave a major speech to the United Nations, “The Road to the Future,” in which he announced the end of ideological conflict with the West, unilateral arms and troop reductions, and the with- drawal of Soviet forces from Warsaw Pact states. If this did not clarify things enough, Gor- bachev made a series of visits to Eastern Europe to encourage reform and stress what he called “the right of every people to choose the paths and forms of its own development” (Mason, 2011, p. 185). Once the threat of Soviet force was removed, there was little left to sustain Communist rule. In general, as historian Ivan Berend has written, “The miracle of

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.1 Politics in Communist Europe

peaceful revolution destroyed state socialism because [ultimately] nobody was ready to defend the regime” (Berend, 2006, p. 1).

Economic Weakness Although the quality and quantity of consumer goods continued to be a major grievance in Eastern Europe, living conditions in many places began to outstrip those in the Soviet Union as the long years during which the satellite economies had been disadvantaged by Russia’s determination to use their output to reconstruct its own economy after World War II began to ease. By the 1970s, for example, only 1 Russian in 46 had a car, compared to more than 1 in 10 in both East Germany and Czechoslovakia.

At the same time, however, Eastern Europe fell further and further behind the West eco- nomically. Overall growth declined from about a very respectable 4 percent between 1950 and 1973—not far below that of Western Europe—to a disastrous 1.25 percent between 1978 and 1989, while net debt increased from $6 billion to $110 billion between 1970 and 1989 (Berend, 2006, pp. 24, 33). Overall income levels declined from about one-half to one-third of those in Western Europe between 1973 and 1989 (Berend, 2006, p. 34). In dollar terms, gross domestic product per capita was about $16,000 in Western Europe in 1990 compared to $6,000 in Eastern Europe and $7,000 in the Soviet Union. Electricity consumption per capita in 1990 was only half of that in Western Europe, and the number of telephone lines was only a quarter. Although foreign travel was forbidden except in Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, the citizenry was well aware of their relative back- wardness due to television, radio, and newspaper accounts as well as from contacts with relatives. Many envied the prosperity of the West (Berend, 2006, p. 37).

Reform in Poland The first major stirrings of dissent since the 1968 Prague Spring came in Poland, where the announcement of massive increases to food prices led to a series of strikes in 1980. These brought to the fore Lech Walesa, an electrician at the massive Lenin shipyard in Gdansk (Danzig), which became the center of strike activity aimed at over 200 enterprises. Poland had also witnessed earlier strike waves in 1970 and 1976, with about 300 killed during the former year when price increases angered workers. The killings had forced Wladyslaw Gomulka to step down as Communist Party leader.

Solidarity The key demand of the workers in 1980 was that the government recognize an inde- pendent, democratically elected trade union as their representative. This union, which became known as Solidarity, quickly received enormous support within Poland, includ- ing among intellectuals and the Catholic Church, which maintained an enormous influ- ence in Poland unknown elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The strength of Polish Catholicism was made clear during the strike, as workers celebrated daily Mass outside the gates of the Lenin shipyards.

The influence of Solidarity and of the Church, along with that of other dissenting move- ments, was greatly increased when the first Polish pope in history, John Paul II, visited the country in 1979. Greeted by millions of the faithful, he openly embraced the causes of

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.1 Politics in Communist Europe

Polish nationalism, freedom of religion, and Solidarity. By August 1980 the government was forced to sign the Gdansk Accord, recognizing Solidarity and the general right of Pol- ish workers to create “new union organizations which will run themselves and which will be authentic representations of the working class,” while Solidarity in turn recognized the preeminent political role of the Communist Party (Gilbert & Large, 2002, p. 534). Within a year, Solidarity had some 10 million members, about one third of the total population.

Victory for an Underground Movement The next year was marked by frequent strikes for better conditions and increasing conflict with the government. Solidarity expanded its program into the political realm, demand- ing free elections and an easing of restrictions on various civil liberties. The government, led after February 1981 by General Wojciech Jaruzelski, began to break strikes by using troops and then declared martial law in December 1981 after Solidarity demanded the right to share economic decision-making powers. Jaruzelski acted with apparent reluc- tance, fearing that Russian troops would intervene if he did not. Nonetheless, the result was a ban on trade union activity and a crackdown on civil liberties, including the use of force to crush further protest strikes and the arrest of Walesa and 6,000 others. Martial law lasted until 1983. So did Walesa’s detention, which meant that he was in jail when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1981.

Although on the surface Poland stagnated for the next five years (the gross national product in 1988 was 13 percent less than in 1978), beneath the surface unrest seethed. There was a vigorous underground dissident movement with an active publishing arm, and the Catholic Church remained a major organizer of discontent. As Gorbachev’s apparent encouragement of political experimentation changed the political dynamic in Poland, open dissent came again to the fore. Solidarity adviser Adam Michnik observed that the union had existed long enough to convince everyone that after martial law it was no longer possible to envision “socialism with a human face,” but only “communism with its teeth knocked out” (Mason, 2011, p. 183). A new wave of strikes in spring, 1988, was broken by force, but growing unrest among workers forced the government to open a series of so-called “round table” nego- tiations with Solidarity in August 1988. This led to an agreement to hold elections, although with 65 percent of the seats reserved for Communist parties and their allies. Following a vigorous campaign, Solidarity won virtually every seat it was allowed to contest while all but two of the government candi- dates, including Prime Minister Mieczyslaw Rakowski, failed to receive the required 50 percent of the votes to win the election even though they ran unopposed.

The agreement had also foreseen a transition period in which the Com- munists would continue to govern

The Catholic Church remained popular and influential in Poland. In the picture, Lech Walesa (left) waits to be confessed outside the Lenin shipyard during the strike. August 23, 1980.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.1 Politics in Communist Europe

and Jaruzelski would be elected president. On July 19, the parliament did elect Jaruzelski by a single vote; 37 Solidarity deputies deliberately cast invalid votes to ensure the out- come. However, the Communists proved unable to form a government, and on August 24 a coalition led by Solidarity took office. Following a transition that had been “peace- ful, pragmatic and harmonious” (Garton Ash, 1990, p. 43), Poland now had the first non- Communist government in Eastern Europe since 1948, led by Walesa’s choice as prime minister, lawyer and Solidarity activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki.

Reform in Hungary Hungary too witnessed a rapid transition to democracy in 1989, spurred by the develop- ments in Poland as well as by a strong tradition of Hungarian nationalism, memories of the Soviet suppression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, and Gorbachev’s calls for reform. Hungary differed from Poland in one significant way, though: The single leading proponent of reform was not an opposition organization like Solidarity but elements of the Hungarian Communist Party itself. Under the leadership of Janos Kadar, who had remained in power since 1956, the Hungarian Communists had followed a strategy known as “goulash communism.” They increasingly stressed consumer goods and de-centralized economic planning, left the country open to an unusual degree of Western influences, and, quite unusually, gave Hungarians the freedom to travel to the West. By the late 1980s demands for further reforms outstripped Kadar’s ability or willingness to provide them. In 1988 a reform movement within the party managed to replace Kadar with new leaders, including two leading Communist radicals.

Under the leadership of this reform movement, Hungary entered a period of rapid change in 1989. It was marked first by the opening of Hungary’s border with Austria, a largely symbolic move whose primary effect was to lead hundreds of vacationing East Germans to flee to the West and to trigger demonstrations in East Germany. The 1956 Hungarian uprising was “rehabilitated” as a “popular” rather than “counterrevolutionary” move- ment; and Imre Nagy, the leader who had been executed by the Soviets and buried in

secret, was reburied in a state funeral attended by 200,000 peo- ple and witnessed by many more on live television. A huge demon- stration commemorated the anni- versary of the uprising as crowds shouted their approval (“Gorby! Gorby!”) of Gorbachev’s reforms.

Following roundtable negotiations on the Polish model, non-Commu- nist parties were allowed to form, and the Hungarian Communists began a series of internal reforms designed to convince the public that they had transformed them- selves into a democratic move- ment based on reformist Western European social democratic parties

Following the collapse of Communism, Hungarians were keen to remove all reminders of the regime. This picture shows some of the large monuments from the Communist era that were taken down and put in Statue Park, Budapest, which opened to the public in 1993.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.1 Politics in Communist Europe

such as those in Sweden. State enterprises were sold off (often to the same Communist leaders who had run them before), and Western investment and trade were vigorously encouraged. In the fall of 1989, the Hungarian Communist Party dissolved itself, and free elections were held in March 1990.

Democracy in East Germany and the Reunification of Germany Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union and the developments in Poland and Hungary, above all the opening of Hungary’s border with Austria, had a galvanizing effect on East Germany, which had long seemed among the most obedient of the satellite regimes. This impression especially resulted from the absence of any spectacular, overt manifestations of discontent since the June 1953 workers’ riots, which had been suppressed by Soviet tanks. However, it was probably incorrect all along: Until the construction of the Ber- lin Wall, millions had expressed their feelings simply by crossing the border into West Germany. After the Wall, millions of others unquestionably went into a kind of “internal exile” known as “inner emigration” by conforming in public while privately detesting the regime’s obedience to all things Soviet.

Certainly the East German government had deep fears concerning the loyalty of its people: In a policy known as Abgrenzung (“delimitation”), Western literature, newspapers, and films were banned, and elaborate border controls and travel restrictions made even visiting the West virtually impossible. Dissidents like the popular singer Wolf Biermann were either jailed or expelled, and the Stasi, a massive secret police apparatus with a staff of 100,000 and 170,000 informants, kept virtually the entire population under rigid surveillance (Paxton, 2005). In fact, the ratio of secret police to citizens in East Germany, 1 agent per 180 people, was higher than in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. Ironically, many of these controls were futile because West German television was easily accessible and made clear to all how stagnant and behind the East German economy and political system was compared to its neighbor and Western Europe in general, even if the general state of the East German economy was considerable more advanced than most of the rest of Eastern Europe.

The rise of Gorbachev encouraged minor manifestations of discontent such as deri- sive cheers of “Gorby!” directed at the police by young people, while the opening of the Hungarian border with Austria led thousands of East Germans to flee or to crowd into West German embassies all over Eastern Europe in hopes of gaining permission to travel to the West. Gorbachev’s visit to East Berlin to mark the 40th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic in October 1989 touched off an unprecedented series of massive demonstrations in cities throughout Germany, especially in Berlin, Leipzig, and Dresden, demonstrations which in turn inspired similar mass movements in Czecho- slovakia. Gorbachev’s presence inspired the demonstrators, who numbered 300,000 in Leipzig and 500,000 in East Berlin as they chanted “Gorby” and “Wir sind das Volk” (We are the people) (Richards & Waibel, 2005, p. 197). For his part, Gorbachev made it clear to the country’s Communist rulers that they were not to use force against their own people.

The Wall Comes Down On October 18, 1989, party leadership forced Erich Honecker, who had ruled East Germany since 1971, to resign; and a reform regime under Egon Krenz, the former head of state secu- rity and the youngest Politburo member, took power with promises of immediate reform.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.1 Politics in Communist Europe

Krenz visited Gorbachev in Moscow and endorsed perestroika. On November 4, the regime announced free emigration through Czechoslovakia to West Germany, followed a few days later by an announcement that movement through the Berlin Wall would be allowed.

The opening of the Wall illustrates the role the media, and especially television, played in the events of 1989. On the evening of November 9, Günther Schabowski, the East German government’s spokesman, gave a press conference. Almost at the very end, he mentioned in passing that new travel regulations had been approved. Journalists jumped on this and asked when the new regulations would come into effect. Schabowski had not been fully briefed, and under pressure he gave the impression that they would do so immediately. Western journalists rushed to get the story out, and West German television reported that East Germans now had freedom to travel. East Germans saw these reports and began to arrive in large numbers at the crossing points in the Wall. Border guards wondered what to do as the crowds built up and demanded the right to travel they had heard about on Western television. At the Bornholmer Street crossing, the guards made their own deci- sion at 10:30 p.m.:

After debating among themselves, [the head guard] decided that the only course of action (other than mass violence) was to open the barriers, and he told his men to do so. A massive surge ensued. Later [the guards] would estimate that several thousand people pushed their way out within just thirty minutes. The division of Germany was over. (Sarotte, 2009, p. 43)

Within days, three million East Germans had visited West Berlin; within a week the num- ber was nine million (Sarotte, 2009).

Mass demonstrations for reforms had continued throughout these events, and the announcement of the end to the Wall sparked huge public celebrations in both parts of the city, as thousands of Berliners literally set to demolishing the wall with hammers, axes, and their hands, while others danced on top of it. Krenz announced that the Com- munists would allow opposition parties to form, and in early December his government collapsed. It was replaced by a new group of Communist reformers who placed Honecker and other longtime Communist leaders under house arrest for corruption. The new gov- ernment also met with dissident leaders to plan a more democratic future, and elections were called for January 1990.

Reunification While demonstrations for further reform continued in East Germany, the effective col- lapse of the GDR raised the issue of the reunification of Germany for the first time in 45 years, a prospect West Germans had long hoped for but which raised major questions given the massively different economic and political systems that had arisen over four decades of separation. West Germany was already overwhelmed with East German refu- gees, causing shortages of housing and jobs, and incorporating East Germany into the West would clearly require massive transfusions of funds and a general shock to the entire social, political, and cultural systems of both countries.

Many people in both the East and the West opposed reunification. The East German dis- sidents who had helped bring down the Communist regime wanted a truly socialist East Germany, not the disappearance of their country. Their goal was to realize “antifascist and

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.1 Politics in Communist Europe

humanistic ideals from which we proceeded long ago,” as Christa Wolf, one of the leading dissidents put it. Leading West German intellectuals such as Jürgen Habermas and Nobel laureate Günther Grass, opposed it too. For Grass, German crimes during World War II had cancelled Germany’s moral right to exist as a single country. Finally, reunification was also a diplomatic problem: Poland did not want to see a single German state reappear, and neither did the Soviet Union or France.

The issue was essentially settled in the first free elections in East German history, held on March 18, 1990. With 93 percent of the eligible voters taking part, a coalition of Conserva- tives backed by Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democrats and favoring rapid unification won a clear victory, taking 48 percent of the votes compared to 22 percent for the Social Demo- crats and 16 percent for the former Communists, who themselves favored a slow path to reunification (Sarotte, 2009).

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, backed by West German public opinion polls, announced a program for German unity in November 1989. He needed the approval of the Soviet Union and was prepared to pay any price short of destroying the West German econ- omy to get it. Several months later, after extract- ing billions of dollars in compensation, Gorbachev reluctantly endorsed German reunification and agreed to withdraw Russian troops from East Ger- many. In September 1990, the four wartime allies, who had theoretically retained a say in German affairs in the absence of a definitive treaty ending World War II, signed an agreement relinquishing their occupation rights. East and West Germany formally merged their economies in July 1990, and on October 5 they merged politically. This was fol- lowed on December 2 by the first free elections in all of Germany since November 1932. Helmut Kohl’s government won a massive victory, taking 306 of the 507 seats in the national parliament.

German reunification played a major role in weakening Gorbachev’s position in the Soviet Union. Hardliners saw him as weak and unable to defend Soviet interests, especially as the addi- tion of former East German territory meant that NATO forces were hundreds of miles closer to the Soviet Union than they had been before. This gen- erated huge resentment within the Soviet Union and undermined the possibility of better relations with the West. Post-Soviet Russia remained suspi- cious of the United States and its allies.

Czechoslovakia—Velvet Revolution and Divorce Ever since the “Prague Spring” of 1968, Czechoslovakia had endured the brutally repres- sive regime of President Gustav Husak. A massive purge of about 5,000 “liberal” Com- munist followers of the deposed 1968 Slovak Communist leader Alexander Dubcek had

The Berlin Wall was the greatest symbol of the Cold War. East German authorities opened the wall on November 9, 1989, and the Communist regime collapsed soon after. In this picture, young people, known as “woodpeckers,” are chipping off pieces of the Wall as souvenirs.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.1 Politics in Communist Europe

“cleansed” not only the party itself but also cultural, educational, and economic institu- tions. Dissidents were allowed to undertake only menial jobs, and Dubcek himself was sidelined with a job as director of forestry in Bratislava. Nonetheless, under the name Charter 77 a small group of intellectuals including the well-known playwright Vaclav Havel came together in December 1976 to maintain a tradition of dissent. Charter 77 repeatedly stressed that the Czech government was violating the promises it made in the 1975 Helsinki accords to guarantee civil liberties, and Havel would spend time in prison in the 1970s and 1980s for his political activity.

Under the influence of developments elsewhere in Eastern Europe, especially those in Germany, a popular protest movement gradually developed in Czechoslovakia, led above all by students from Prague’s Charles University. A mass protest on November 17, 1989, which included calls for the resignation of the local Communist leaders and cries of “We don’t want to be last” was met with brutal repression. The violence backfired, however. Substantial numbers of manual and middle-class workers joined subsequent protests for the first time. The protesters began to routinely number in the tens of thousands, and the movement spread from Prague to other Czech cities, including Bratislava where Dubcek publicly demanded the government’s resignation.

The opposition was organized in the Civic Forum with its headquarters in a theater called the Magic Lantern. Quickly, Havel emerged as its undisputed leader. Garton Ash, who was in the theater during the crucial days, described Havel’s role:

It was extraordinary the degree to which everything ultimately revolved around this one man. In almost all the Forum’s major decisions and state- ments, he was the final arbiter, the one person who could somehow balance the very different tendencies in the movement. (Garton Ash, 1990, pp. 89–90)

On November 23, the entire Politburo resigned to be replaced by a “reform communist” regime still under Husak, but the tidal wave of protests continued. A crowd of 350,000 gath- ered in Prague’s Wenceslas Square the following day, demanding free elections, a free market, and complete independence from the Soviet Union. As the demonstrations continued, with protesters threatening a general strike, President Husak resigned and opposition leaders

formed a government under non- Communist leadership. Havel was chosen as president in December 1989, a post he occupied until 2003. Free travel to the West and plans for free elections were immedi- ately announced. Havel noted that the revolution had taken 10 years in Poland, 10 months in Hungary, 10 weeks in East Germany, but only 10 ten days in Czechoslovakia.

However, in one critical area pro- tests continued. Slovaks had long felt slighted by their Czech broth- ers and sisters, and under the influ- ence of the breakup of the Soviet

Vaclav Havel (second from right) and others celebrate the resignation of the Communist government, November 25, 1989. To Havel’s left is Alexander Dubcek, the hero of the 1968 Prague Spring.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.1 Politics in Communist Europe

Union, Slovak leaders demanded increased autonomy and resisted the transition to a full market economy. Unable to agree on terms short of complete independence for Slovakia, the two countries formally but peacefully separated on November 25, 1992. Because of its peaceful nature, Havel had termed the Czech protest movement a “velvet revolution.” Now it was followed by an equally “velvet” divorce.

Bulgaria The 1989 Bulgarian revolution followed the paths of those in Poland and Hungary more than those in East Germany and Czechoslovakia by resulting primarily from internal movements within the Communist Party. However, as these were not accompanied by any significant popular movement, the changes were not as far reaching, amounting to a change of leadership with little broader democratic reform.

In Their Own Words: Plastic People of the Universe: Dissident Rockers

Twenty To be twenty these days Makes you want to puke your guts out in disgust But those who are forty Have even more reason to spew Only those who are sixty, Can sleep peacefully in a senile haze.

The Plastic People maintained their integrity not because they were good musicians: in other rock groups of the time, there were better musicians. But in the most difficult period, when the Plastics lacked equipment, when they had nothing to fall back on and no public prospects, one thing was clear to them: It is better not to play at all than to play music that does not come from one’s convictions. It is bet- ter not to play at all than to play what the establishment demands. (Ivan Jirous, artistic director)

The Plastic People of the Universe band was formed following the Soviet invasion that put an end to the Prague Spring. Inspired by Western models such as the Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa, they initially sang in English before deciding to sing only in Czech and taking the work of banned poet Egon Bondy as their lyrics. As part of the increasing repression known as “normalization,” the Plastic People lost their license to perform in public in 1970. From this point on, the group could perform only under- ground concerts. In 1973, they were again given a license to perform, but it was quickly revoked.

The Plastics then became the center of an underground rock scene that was targeted by the police. They were able to organize “Festivals of the Second Culture” in 1975 and 1976; as these were suppos- edly private entertainment for weddings, they were exempt from the regulations governing public per- formance. A few months after the second festival, however, a number of the musicians, including all the members of the Plastic People, were arrested and tried for “organized disturbance of the peace.” The trial mobilized dissidents like Vaclav Havel and led to the creation of Charter 77. The Plastic People of the Universe disbanded in 1988 but, at the suggestion of Havel, who was then President of the Czech Republic, they reunited in 1997 and have been performing ever since.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.1 Politics in Communist Europe

Bulgaria traditionally had cooperative relations with Russia and had no significant heri- tage of intense anti-Russian nationalism, unlike Hungary and Poland. Its leader, Communist Party General Secretary Todor Zhivkov, had been in power since 1954, the longest run in the Communist world. Unlike the rest of the Soviet bloc, heavy industry had not been a priority in Bulgaria, and it retained a strong agricultural center. Zhivkov allowed peasants to keep small plots of land for private use and encouraged pride in Bulgaria’s past. At the same time, he harassed the Turkish minority, expelling them in large numbers when they tried to resist his “Bulgarization” campaigns. As a result, Bulgaria suffered from shortages of skilled labor.

Zhivkov was ousted in a Politburo coup led by foreign minister Peter Mladenov on Novem- ber 9, 1989, the same day that the Berlin Wall was formally opened. He was placed under house arrest on a charge of corruption (he was widely believed to have engaged illegal arms and drugs trading). Free elections were announced, and the Bulgarization policy for ethnic Turks was abandoned, resulting in the return of thousands of Turks to Bulgaria. The Communists remained in power until 1991, when an anti-Communist coalition came to office and began to institute free market reforms and a purge of Communist officials. Zhivkov was sentenced to seven years imprisonment.

Violent Change in Romania It is probably no accident that among the Soviet bloc states, Romania’s regime was both the most repressive and the only one to use extensive repression in a (failed) attempt to stay in power in 1989. Two rulers, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (who was in power 1944–1965) and his successor, Nicolae Ceausescu, had served as virtually absolute dictators ever since the days of Stalin, keeping Romania frozen in time. One small benefit of their tremendous internal power was that they were able to establish some independence with regard to foreign pol- icy, which gained the country some modest American foreign aid without having to worry about internal repercussions. Ceausescu’s ability to “show some independence of the Soviet Union could gratify Romanian national feelings, which little else in that drab dictatorship could gratify” (Paxton, 2005, p. 589). For example, Romanian athletes participated in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles despite the boycott the Soviets imposed on their other satellites.

Ceausescu developed a cult of personality around himself fully worthy of Stalin. Indeed, he was possibly even a greater megalomaniac: He was officially proclaimed the Architect, the Creed-Shaper, the Wise Helmsman, the Nimbus of Victory, the Son of the Sun, a Danube of Thought, and the Genius of the Carpathians, among other honorifics. He had an equally worthy repressive apparatus, with a massive secret police presence, the Securitate. Even talking to foreigners was forbidden to ordinary citizens at the cost of severe reprisals. At the time of his overthrow and death Ceausescu was involved in a massive project that destroyed large parts of his beautiful capital, Bucharest, in order, among other things, to create for himself a massive presidential palace, three times as big as Louis XIV’s palace at Versailles.

Other Eastern European countries had run up massive foreign debts purchasing consumer goods abroad to try to keep their citizens happy. In contrast, Romania exported its natural treasures in oil, electricity, and agricultural products to the West, leaving ordinary citizens to suffer from constant shortages of energy and food. Regarding even fetuses as “property of the state” (Gilbert & Large, 2002, p. 554), Ceausescu banned contraception and abor- tion. As a result, the nation’s orphanages were bursting with 100,000 abandoned children

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.1 Politics in Communist Europe

raised in terrible conditions. The regime had also begun a policy known as the “system- atization” of agriculture, which resembled Stalin’s collectivization of the 1930s. The coun- try’s 13,000 rural villages were to be reduced by half; the rest were to be destroyed and the residents forced into large “agro-towns.” Most of the people affected came from the country’s ethnic minorities.

Although Ceausescu harangued a Romanian Communist Party Congress for five hours on November 20, 1989, lambasting the threat posed by foreign capitalist and bourgeois influences, he eventually could not resist being caught up in the currents of change sweep- ing Eastern Europe. When the regime tried to oust a dissident minister from the north- western city of Timisoara in mid-December, thousands of protesters resisted. Security officials opened fire on them, killing or injuring hundreds. Anti-regime riots soon swept the country, and when Ceausescu tried to end the movement with a speech from his Bucharest palace on December 21, he was shouted down. He fled by helicopter along with his equally hated wife, Elena. Attempts to suppress the protest movement led to days of pitched battles in the streets between the Securitate, which remained loyal, and the army, which did not. Scores of people were killed before Ceau- sescu’s security police gave up the fight. In the meantime Ceausescu and his wife were captured, given a hasty trial, and executed by fir- ing squad on December 25.

The governments that followed Ceausescu were dogged by extreme corruption, but by 2007 Romania was deemed to have made enough progress both economically and politi- cally to be admitted to the European Union (three years after much of the rest of Eastern Europe was admitted).

The Collapse of the Soviet Union

Gorbachev’s initiatives and the developments in the satellite states also spurred national- ism within the Soviet Union’s 15 ethnic republics, including open fighting between Arme- nians and Azerbaijanis over territorial disputes and major movements for independence in Ukraine, Georgia, and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. The move- ments in the Baltic republics were especially strong since they had been independent between the wars and were only reincorporated into the Soviet Union in the wake of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet “non-aggression” pact. Thus, on August 23, 1989, the 50th anniversary of that pact, an estimated two million Baltic citizens formed a human chain along their borders as a protest gesture. Lithuania formally declared its independence on March 11, 1990, while nationalist ferment continued to spread.

Unlike Communist leaders elsewhere, Nicolae Ceausescu tried to use the security forces to defend his regime. The picture shows the central square of Bucharest two days after Ceausescu was executed and his regime replaced.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.1 Politics in Communist Europe

Within Russia itself on all political sides, there was a growing sense of chaos and discon- tent with Gorbachev. While reformist elements in the newly elected parliament under the leadership of Moscow Communist Party leader Boris Yeltsin demanded more and quicker reforms, a strong anti-Semitic, authoritarian, and nationalistic movement complained that Gorbachev was ruining the country. In March 1990, the legislature voted to end the Com- munist Party’s monopoly on power, and soon thereafter the Soviet Union began to crumble as republic after republic followed the Lithuanian example and declared independence.

In June 1991, Yeltsin was elected to the new office of president of the Russian Federa- tion, and he promptly oversaw passage of a law banning the Communist Party in Rus- sia. Gorbachev, by now gravely weakened and operating from the office of president of the Soviet Union, to which he had earlier been elected by the Congress, attacked Yeltsin for “acting like a tsar” (Gilbert & Large, 2002, p. 530), but he was increasingly without authority as the Soviet Union crumbled around him. When, in August, Gorbachev and Yeltsin sought to reach agreement for greatly increasing autonomy in the constituent Soviet republics, a coup led by hard-line Communists, nationalists, the army, and the security agencies sought to oust Gorbachev and reestablish the territorial integrity of the Soviet Union under Communist rule. However, Yeltsin personally led resistance to the coup, mounting a tank stationed outside the legislative hall and appealing for popular support. The coup collapsed and Gorbachev resigned as head of the Communist Party a few days later.

On December 8, 1991, Yeltsin and other Soviet republic heads signed a formal treaty dis- solving the Soviet Union and replacing it with a loose federation of autonomous repub- lics known as the Commonwealth of Independent States, which in fact never functioned as a unified entity. Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991, at which time the Russian flag replaced the Soviet hammer and sickle flying over the Kremlin Palace in Red Square. After 70 years, the Soviet Union was no more. The immediate economic results of the political chaos for the former Soviet Union were

catastrophic: In 1991, net income fell 17 percent, more than in any one year in United States history, even during the Great Depression.

Gorbachev had attempted an am- bitious program of effecting simul- taneous political and economic change, and it proved to be too much. The Communist leader- ship in China, which had violently repressed pro-democracy demon- strations in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, took note. They would promote economic change without allowing the slightest expression of political dissent. It would prove to be a highly successful formula.

Boris Yeltsin stands atop a tank and faces down an attempted coup by Communist hardliners, August 1991.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.2 The Economy: The End of the Golden Age

6.2 The Economy: The End of the Golden Age

The sustained economic growth that Western Europe had enjoyed since the end of World War II came to a screeching halt in 1974. In October 1973, a coalition of Arab states attacked Israel. In response to U.S. support for Israel in the ensuing Yom Kip- pur War, first Saudi Arabia and then other petroleum-producing states in OPEC (Orga- nization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) announced an oil embargo. Within a few months, the price of a barrel of oil jumped from $3 per barrel to $12. Prices jumped again in 1979–1980 following the Iranian revolution and the start of the Iran-Iraq War, hitting $23 per barrel, although they then dropped sharply during the 1980s.

The effect on Europe was staggering. European countries had become much more depen- dent on petroleum than they had been in 1950, and they imported the vast majority of it, 734 million out of 749 million tons (Vinen, 2001). They had also become accustomed to cheap and stable petroleum prices: The price of oil on the international market had barely changed between 1955 and 1973, and when inflation is taken into account, it actually had dropped.

Indicators of the Crisis

The impact of the crisis can be seen in a number of different ways. Overall economic growth fell to only a fraction of what it had been in the 1950s and 1960s. Between 1974 and 1983, the West German economy grew by an average of 1.6 percent per year, com- pared to almost 5 percent before 1973; the figures for the Netherlands were 1.4 percent and 5 percent. For the 12 members of the European Community, yearly growth collapsed from 4.8 percent between 1960 and 1973 to 0.5 percent in the early 1980s. Unemployment rates exploded, hitting 12 percent in West Germany, 14 percent in the Netherlands, and 20 percent in Spain. There was more unemployment in France and Italy in these years than during the Depression of the 1930s. West Germany shut down the guest worker program and encouraged its guests to go home; more than half a million did so in 1975 alone. Poverty, which the European Union defined as having an income less than half the national average, rose from 12.6 percent to 14.7 percent between 1975 and 1993, and despite the existence of the welfare state, so too did inequality.

In spite of all this, Europe also experienced high rates of infla- tion, which jumped from an aver- age of 3.7 percent per year in the 1960s to 6.4 percent between

One of the many effects of the oil crisis of the 1970s was a ban on Sunday driving in Germany. This picture shows a totally empty stretch of autobahn.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.2 The Economy: The End of the Golden Age

1969 and 1973 to 10.9 percent between 1973 and 1979. In some countries, such as Italy, Spain, and the UK, the figure was 16 percent or more (Mazower, 1999). In large part, inflation was caused by the United States: Running a huge deficit because of the war in Vietnam, in 1971 the U.S. government ended the convertibility of the dollar, which had been the basis of the international monetary system since the end of World War II. (Under the so-called Bretton Woods system, currencies had a fixed exchange rate to the U.S. dollar, and the U.S. government committed to link the dollar to gold at an estab- lished price of $35 per ounce.) The result was an unusual combination of economic phenomena: Prices increased at the same time that the economy slowed, which was given the name “stagflation” (Judt, 2005). It affected everyone in a way that unemploy- ment did not, and it quickly developed from an economic issue to a political one, lead- ing to the rise of conservative politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan (Mazower, 1999).

The Unification Process

The European economies also came under pressure from the increasing internationaliza- tion of economic life. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), signed by 23 countries in 1947, continued to reduce tariff barriers. European countries faced increasing competition from countries such as the United States, Japan, and some developing coun- tries, known as New Industrial Countries, or NICs, that had lower wages and social costs. World trade increased during the 1970s, but Europe’s share of world exports fell by about 12 percent, although it recovered somewhat by 1987 (Kelly, 1988, p. 89).

Much of this internationalization came from within Europe itself, the product of the ongo- ing process of European unification. The European Economic Community expanded dur- ing this period, adding Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom in 1973, Greece in 1981, Portugal and Spain in 1986, and the former East Germany as part of reunited Ger- many in 1990. (See Figure 6.1.) It also strengthened integration among its members, which reduced each country’s autonomy in economic and fiscal matters. The European Mon- etary System (EMS), established in 1979, was intended to restore some of the stability lost through the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. Under the EMS, member states were required to maintain the value of their currencies within narrow limits, restricting their ability to manipulate exchange rates to their own advantage, for example devaluing the currency to make exports cheaper and imported goods more expensive.

The European Economic Community (EEC) responded to the combination of economic crisis, on the one hand, and, on the other, the addition of a number of new members, three of which were recently established democracies, by taking major steps to further the pro- cess of unification. The most important development was the Single European Act, which was signed in February 1986. In addition to streamlining its decision-making process, the Act gave the EEC responsibilities in new areas: monetary capacity, social policy, economic and social cohesion, research and technological development, and the environment. The goal was to create a single European market by January 1, 1993. Goods, services, capital, and people would circulate freely in a newly renamed European Union (EU) complete with its own flag.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.2 The Economy: The End of the Golden Age

These changes were confirmed at a key meeting in the Dutch city of Maastricht in 1991, the same year that Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia signed association agreements with the EU indicating their wish to join as soon as possible. By 1991, the EU, originally a customs union of only 6 states, had 12 members with a combined population of over 350 million, making it the largest trading block in the world.

Structural Changes to the Economy

The destabilization caused by the petroleum crisis and inflation led to fundamental changes to the European economy. Put simply, the industrial sector, the main economic driver since the 19th century, became less important than the service sector. (See Figure 6.2.) By the beginning of the 1990s, the percentage of the economically active population engaged in manufacturing fell to levels below those of 1960 in almost every country in Western Europe.

N

S

EW

FRANCE

LUXEMBOURG

NETHERLANDS

BELGIUM

ITALY

1952 1973 1981 1986 1995 2004

SPAIN

PORTUGAL

POLAND

LITHUANIA

LATVIA ESTONIA

IRELAND

SWEDEN

FINLAND UNITED

KINGDOM

DENMARK

GERMANY CZECH REPUBLIC

AUSTRIA HUNGARY

SLOVAKIA

SLOVENIA

MALTA GREECE

CYPRUS

73

73 73

73

52

52 52

52

52

52

04

04

04

04

04

04 04

04

04

95

95

95

81

81 81

81

81 81

86

86

86

The EEC added three countries in 1973, one in 1981 and two more in 1986.

Figure 6.1: EEC map

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.2 The Economy: The End of the Golden Age

P er

ce nt

ag e

1960–61 Year

1970–71 1992–931980–81

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10

5 0

Belgium France West Germany Italy Spain Sweden United Kingdom

The petroleum crisis and inflation caused major changes to the European industrial sector. As the service sector grew larger, heavy industrial jobs like textiles, shipbuilding, and coal mining decreased significantly.

Figure 6.2: Percentage of the economically active population engaged in manufacturing, 1960–1993

The Decline of Industry Traditional heavy industries were the hardest hit. From 1974 to 1985, employment in iron and steel, textiles, and shipbuilding in 10 Western European countries fell by 42 percent, 38 percent, and 62 percent respectively. Coal mining also suffered. The effects in particu- lar cities or regions could be devastating: Lorraine in Northern France saw 28 percent of its manufacturing jobs disappear by 1981, and in three years at the end of the 1970s, 65,000

of 165,000 workers at the Italian auto giant FIAT lost their jobs. By the mid-1980s Valenciennes, for- merly a major French steel mak- ing center, had fewer steelworkers than teachers (Vinen, 2001). Work- ers in these industries were gener- ally heavily unionized, and at first they tried to protect themselves by striking against layoffs and closures. But as the structure of the economy continued to change during the 1980s, the number of strikes decreased significantly.

Governments tried to step in to help. State subsidies for ailing industries,

Lorraine was a traditional center of heavy industry in France. This steel factory was threatened with major restructuring; referring to a local town name, the graffiti on the wall says, “Longwy will live”.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.2 The Economy: The End of the Golden Age

what were called “defensive investments,” increased significantly, doubling in some coun- tries, quadrupling in the Netherlands, and growing 14 times in Sweden. Governments also provided subsidies to reinvigorate falling exports. This sort of assistance jumped from a range of 1 percent to 5 percent of capital goods exports when the crisis began, to between 10 percent and 28 percent at the beginning of the 1980s (Berend, 2006, pp. 168–170).

Efforts to sustain traditional economic strengths slowed the development of emerging new technology industries. By the mid-1980s, European companies controlled only 9 per- cent of the world market in computers and data processing equipment, 13 percent in satel- lites, and 29 percent in data transmission services (Berend, 2006, p. 168).

The Rise of Services Services, on the other hand, accounted for a growing share of employment, reaching 61 percent in Western Europe and 66 percent in Northern Europe by 1990. The figure for Southern Europe (Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain) was lower, only 48 percent, because agriculture continued to employ many more people in these countries than in the other two regions (Broadberry, 2010). In 1970, the largest number of service sector workers was in public administration and community social work, followed by tourism. They remained the largest categories in 1990, but they had shrunk as a percentage of the total, while such private-sector activities as financial services, research and development, and real estate had grown.

Women in the Workforce These structural changes coincided with another major development: the increase in the number of women working outside the home. Women filled 75 percent of jobs created between 1983 and 1992, and in 1990 the employment rate for European women hit 37.9 per- cent, compared to a figure of around 20 percent in most countries in 1960. The percentage of working-age women who were employed varied widely by country, from 32.3 percent in Spain and 36.8 percent in Greece in 1992 to 51.3 percent in France and 54.4 percent in Germany to 67.8 percent in Denmark and 76.1 percent in Sweden. With the exception of tex- tiles, the industries in decline had never employed many women. In contrast, the emergent service sector did, although wages here were usually below those earned by male industrial workers. Overall, women’s incomes in 1980 were around 60 percent those of men, and the figure had not changed much by 1992. (Le Feuvre, n.d.).

Unemployment The postwar baby boom meant that by the 1970s the percentage of the population that was of working age had increased. Together with the growing participation rate of women in the labor force, this meant that more Europeans were seeking jobs at precisely the moment that the economy was least able to provide them. The full employment and labor shortage of the age of prosperity quickly turned into large-scale unemployment. What was striking about the situation in Europe, at least compared to the United States, were the high rates of long-term unemployment, that is, those who were unemployed for more than 12 months. (See Figure 6.3.) These people would prove a growing burden on the welfare state.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.3 Politics in the West

P er

ce nt

ag e

1983 Year 1987 1990

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10

0

United States France Germany Netherlands Spain

Many factors contributed to the high levels of unemployment during the 1980s, including the post-war baby boom and an increasing number of women in the workforce. This flood of eligible persons into the working population led to a considerable shortage of available jobs.

Figure 6.3: Long-term unemployment, 1983–1990

6.3 Politics in the West

Western European politics changed significantly during this period. The last remaining dictatorships gave way to democracies. Neoliberalism challenged the consensus underlying the age of prosperity. New social and political movements emerged. Terrorism returned. The relative political stability of the 1950s and 1960s disappeared.

The End of the Dictatorships Postwar Western Europe was defined politically by democracy. There were, however, two exceptions: the regimes of Antonio Salazar in Portugal and Francisco Franco in Spain. They were joined in 1967 by a military dictatorship in Greece. All three dictatorships dis- appeared in 1974–1975, but their ends were very different.

Portugal Antonio Salazar’s “Estado Novo” (New State) was the oldest dictatorship in Europe, hav- ing been established in 1933. One of Salazar’s key policies was to emphasize the central- ity of the colonies to the identity of Portugal, and this continued even after a fall left him incapacitated and he was replaced as head of government by Marcelo Caetano in 1968.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.3 Politics in the West

When anti-colonial struggles broke out in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique in the early 1960s, the regime did everything it could to defeat them. Ultimately, this effort led to a revolution in Portugal itself in April 1974.

When left-wing officers in an organization called the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) that wanted an end to the wars staged an uprising, Caetano handed power to General Anto- nio Spínola, a conservative officer who was also a critic of the colonial wars. For the next fifteen months, Portugal experienced a struggle for control between MFA radicals and the moderates led by Spínola. His attempt to establish his dominance over the MFA through a coup in March 1975 failed, and he went into exile. This led to a more radical phase in which the banks and insurance companies were nationalized and landless laborers occu- pied land and created co-operatives.

Elections for a parliament to write a new constitution in April 1975 were followed by a period of more intense social conflict that lasted through the summer. On November 25, radical military units tried to carry out a coup but failed. This led to the eclipse of the radi- cals, as moderates took control of the MFA and promised to hand over power to a civilian government. The ratification of the constitution in April 1976 was followed by elections that gave the Socialist Party the largest number of seats. Elections for the presidency of the republic were held in July; Antonio Ramalho Eanes, a moderate officer, soundly defeated the leading MFA radical, which marked the end of the revolution and the normalization of political life.

Spain Francisco Franco’s regime emerged out of the Nationalist victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). It was supported by a variety of political forces, which the dictator played off against each other. At first, Franco emphasized the fascist nature of the regime, giving a leading role to the single official party, the National Movement. Once it became appar- ent that the Nazis were going to lose the war, however, he downplayed Fascism in favor of Catholicism and anti-Communism, styling himself the “sentinel of the West.” After the war, he moved much closer to the United States, even allowing the Americans to estab- lish military bases in Spain. Then, when his failed economic policies threatened Spain with bankruptcy in the late 1950s, Franco changed course again and brought a number of technocrats into the government, many of whom were associated with the secretive Catholic organization Opus Dei. These people oversaw the Spanish “economic miracle” of the 1960s.

A decade of economic growth left Spain changed. Many Spaniards were less willing to accept living under a dictatorship that had started before World War II, and protests increased in the first years of the 1970s. At the same time, memories of the horrors of civil war remained potent, and no one wanted to repeat them. Thus, when Franco died in November 1975, key figures in the regime, most notably his successor as head of state, King Juan Carlos, were willing to work with the leaders of the opposition, including Socialists and Communists. The result, achieved against the background of a serious eco- nomic crisis, was an astonishing negotiated transition to democracy that was quick and mostly peaceful. It included an agreement to forget the past and not carry out purges or bring people to trial for crimes committed under the regime.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.3 Politics in the West

The June 1977 democratic elections, the first since 1936, brought to power a new centrist party led by Adolfo Suarez, a Francoist bureau- crat who had led the transition. The Socialist Party came second. The new parliament chose a committee with representatives from a num- ber of political parties to draft a constitution, which was approved in a referendum in December 1978: 88 percent voted in favor and only 8 percent voted against.

These changes did not guarantee political stability, however. On February 23, 1981, a group of Civil Guards invaded the parliament and held all the deputies captive as part of an attempted military coup. Their effort collapsed when King Juan Carlos announced his support for the democratic system. The next year, in 1982, the Socialist Party under Felipe González scored a massive electoral victory and began a period of 14 years in power.

Greece After some years of increasing political instability and controversy over the role of the king, Greece succumbed to a military coup on April 21, 1967. The regime was extremely authoritarian and anti-modern. All dictatorships censor the press and ban strikes; far fewer prohibit rock music, long hair, miniskirts, and the study of sociology and Russian. The Greek colonels did all this.

In 1973, the regime responded to increasing protests, which had begun with students challenging government intervention in the universities and demanding an end to dictatorship by appealing to nationalist sentiments over Cyprus. The island had come under Brit- ish control in 1878, and in 1960 the British granted it independence. Its population was divided between a Greek majority and a Turkish minority that made up about 18 per- cent of the total. Relations between the two populations were not easy, and in 1963 the United Nations sent in a peacekeeping force. On July 15,

As part of an attempted coup against Spain’s young democracy, Civil Guard Lt. Colonel Antonio Tejero stands on the podium with pistol in hand after leading the takeover of Spain’s Parliament on February 23, 1981. The coup collapsed when King Juan Carlos made a television address calling on the armed forces to stand down.

Greek Cypriot villagers relocate after the Turkish invasion of the island in 1974. A coup involving the military dictatorship of Greece prompted the invasion. The success of the invasion led to the fall of the dictatorship.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.3 Politics in the West

1974, the Greek regime conspired with Greek Cypriots to stage a coup that would lead to Greece annexing the island.

Less than a week later, however, the government of Turkey announced it was going to send troops to Cyprus to protect the Turkish minority. After a few days, Turkish forces controlled almost half the island, and the Greek regime, which was unable to respond, was humiliated. With no other exit, the colonels called on the veteran centrist politician Constantine Karamanlis, who had gone into exile following the coup, to head a transition government. Karamanlis won a major victory in elections in November 1974 and then oversaw the creation of a new democratic constitution.

The Rise of Neoliberalism

The welfare state that was such a defining feature of Western Europe in the age of pros- perity was built on agreement among all major political parties on the general outlines of economic and social policy. Based on the ideas that John Maynard Keynes had developed during the Depression, this consensus “took for granted that economic planning, deficit financing and full employment were inherently desirable and mutually sustaining” (Judt, 2005, p. 536). The economic crisis that ended the age of prosperity also led to this consen- sus being called into question by an ideology known as neoliberalism.

The neoliberal critique can be summarized in two propositions: The postwar European economic model was no longer sustainable, and even if it could be sustained, it meant that the economy would grow less than it could—and should—otherwise. In its place, neo- liberals offered a series of policies that harked back to the classical liberalism of the 19th century: privatizing state-owned companies, reducing regulations on economic activities, reducing taxes, and, in general, rolling back the state, which was no longer to be consid- ered responsible for the well-being of its citizens.

Neoliberal ideas were not new, but they achieved new popularity and importance during this period. They originated with the so-called “Vienna school” of economists, of whom the best known was Friedrich A. Hayek (1899–1992). Hayek and Keynes were contempo- raries, but their positions could not have been more different. Hayek was a firm believer in the untrammeled free market and an adamant opponent of any state involvement in it. This, Hayek claimed, was not only harmful to the economy but it also represented a threat to freedom. In his most famous work, The Road to Serfdom (1944), Hayek argued that gov- ernment control of the economy would lead to totalitarianism as it had in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Even the welfare state, which he described in the 1956 U.S. edition of the book as “that hodgepodge of ill-assembled and often inconsistent ideals,” could potentially produce the same damaging results as “full-fledged socialism” (Hayek, 2007, p. 44). From 1950 to 1962, Hayek taught at the University of Chicago, where he helped cre- ate the “Chicago School” of economics. It would be these economists, and above all Milton Friedman (1912–2006), who would be the most influential proponents of neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism in Action In the context of slow growth and rocketing inflation, Neoliberalism, also known as mar- ket fundamentalism, became politically influential. The 1980s was its decade. Its first suc- cesses came in the United Kingdom and the United States, with the elections of Margaret

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.3 Politics in the West

Thatcher (1979) and Ronald Reagan (1980) respectively. Thatcher, who held power until 1991, was the most thorough advocate of these policies. In her case, this meant taking on the trade unions, which suffered a number of epic defeats culminating in the coal miners’ strike of 1984–1985. However, even this champion of neoliberalism did not manage to sig- nificantly reduce the size of the British state. At the end of the 1980s, the percentage of GDP devoted to state expenditure had barely budged, from 42.5 percent to 41.7 percent. Welfare spending had fallen even less while taxes constituted the same share of national income (Mazower, 1999). Thatcher had criticized her Labor predecessor for allowing unemploy- ment to reach 1.6 million; on her watch it hit 3.25 million, and these people became welfare recipients. In addition, Thatcher reduced the power of local government by transferring some of its key respon- sibilities, including education, to London. The overall result was “a remarkable . . . revival of the Brit- ish state” (Judt, 2005, p. 451).

On the continent, things were even less straightforward. In general, right-wing parties did not do very well. After 42 years in power, the left-leaning Swedish Social Demo- crats were voted out of office in 1974, but they were back again in 1982. Their Danish counterparts, who had been in government almost every year since 1929, were defeated in 1982 and remained in opposition until 1993. In West Germany, the conservative Christian Demo- crats under Helmut Kohl (1930– ) replaced the Social Democrats in government in 1982. In other countries, though, Socialist and Social Democratic parties made breakthroughs. They came to power for the first time since the end of World War II in France (1981), Spain (1982), and Italy (1983), and in the first two they had long runs. The French Socialists were defeated only in 1995 and the Spanish in 1996.

No conservative European government took neoliberalism to the extremes that Thatcher did. In West Germany, Kohl cut unemployment benefits and pensions by about 5 percent. The Conservatives who governed Denmark made only small reductions to that coun- try’s generous social programs (Paxton, 2005). On the other hand, even left-wing parties found themselves constrained to adopt some neoliberal policies. The French case was particularly striking. After his election in 1981, Francois Mitterand oversaw a program of nationalizations, wage increases, shortening the work week, and lowering the retirement age. The nationalizations included 36 banks and 5 of the largest industrial companies in the country. Yet in 1982 he changed his economic policy entirely: He reduced spending on the public service, raised taxes, and privatized some national companies. In Spain too, the process of privatizing the large number of state-owned companies the Franco regime had built up was initiated by the Socialists.

Standing before a massive British flag, Margaret Thatcher launches the Conservative Party manifesto in 1983. Patriotism was a large part of her appeal.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.3 Politics in the West

Privatization Indeed, privatization was the most commonly followed neoliberal policy during the 1980s. Governments sold off various publicly owned businesses including railroads, air- lines, chemicals and steel production, and telephone systems. On the one hand, the money raised from selling state-owned assets was a boon to governments facing deficits. So too was the possibility of getting rid of businesses that continually racked up huge losses and had to be supported by government money. On the other hand, in sectors such as telecommunications—and utilities in general—government-owned businesses were what economists call “natural monopolies”; these are activities where the costs of entering the market, by building a transmission network for example, are so vast that the first one in has a huge advantage. By the 1980s, technological developments such as the introduction of cable television, which allowed small broadcasters to reach large audiences in cities, began to make such monopolies unsustainable.

Broadcasting is the most striking example. Into the 1970s, the typical European pattern was to establish a public monopoly to provide an entire country with two or three televi- sion channels and a handful of radio stations (Noam, 1991). The British Broadcasting Cor- poration (BBC) is the classic example. This began to change after 1985, and by 1991 many European countries had allowed private television stations to operate, although they also retained their public broadcasters. In many countries, such as France, Socialist govern- ments oversaw this change.

The leader in privatization was Italy. The change started in 1976 with a Supreme Court deci- sion that the state monopoly on local and regional broadcasting was illegal. Very quickly, numerous private television and radio stations emerged; Rome had almost 30 television stations by the early 1980s. One entrepreneur, Silvio Berlusconi, used his influence with the notoriously corrupt Socialist government of Bettino Craxi (1983–1987) to build an immense media empire that included several newspapers, the major advertising agency and major publisher as well as the three largest private television stations. Berlusconi would use his control of the media to make a successful move into politics after 1993 (see chapter 7).

Private television proved immensely popular. By the beginning of the 1990s, the share of the prime time viewing audience held by the public broadcasters had dropped below 50 percent in every country except Spain and Austria. In some countries, it was far below: 24.7 percent in Portugal, 21.7 percent in the French-speaking part of Belgium, and only 11.2 percent in Greece (Sassoon, 2006).

Outcomes By the beginning of the 1990s, the old high-tax, highly regulated economic model, often accompanied by a high degree of state ownership, had disappeared. Yet for all the rhetoric and the drama, the state had not been removed as a significant actor in the economy. In fact, in countries such as Denmark, Germany, and Italy, the public sector accounted for a greater percentage of the labor force in 1990 than it had been in 1974 (Judt, 2005). For its part, the welfare state had not only survived; it had actually grown in almost every coun- try, as Figure 6.4 demonstrates.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.3 Politics in the West

P er

ce nt

ag e

1974

Year 1983 1995

40 35 30 25 20 15 10

5 0

Belgium

France

Germany

Italy

Netherlands

Spain

Sweden

Many Europeans consider spending on health, educational, and other social benefits as necessary to preserving social structure, and in turn are willing to pay higher taxes to meet higher government expenditures in these areas.

Figure 6.4: Social Security expenditure, 1974–1995 (% GDP)

Europeans were prepared to allow aspects of the economy to be made more “American” with less regulation and less state ownership. What they were not prepared to do was let their societies go the same way, giving up the health, educational, and other social ben- efits the welfare state provided. Polls showed that Europeans believed that social circum- stances, not individual failings, were the cause of poverty. They also believed that they lived longer—and better—than Americans, and they were prepared to pay the taxes to retain this situation. In sum, what became known as the European Social Model had broad and stable political support.

New Political Movements

Since 1945, large parties on the left and right dominated politics in Western Europe. This began to change in the 1970s with the appearance of new political movements that defined themselves by their concern for particular issues: taxes, peace, the environment, or the sta- tus of women. The most influential of these would be environmentalism, feminism, and populism.

Environmentalism Concern over the environmental implications of ongoing economic growth emerged in the early 1960s, but those concerned were mainly limited to fringe groups with offbeat or whimsical ideas. In 1965, the Provos, a group of unorthodox anarchists in Amsterdam,

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.3 Politics in the West

proposed their “White Bicycle Plan,” which aimed to reduce traffic congestion in the his- toric city by making free bicycles available.

The environment became a more important issue in the 1970s, and environmentalist groups and even political parties began to emerge. France and particularly West Ger- many, where the focus was on resisting the construction of nuclear power stations and protecting forests and other natural environments, were the leaders. Initially, environ- mentalists engaged in direct action, including civil disobedience, staging demonstrations such as in Norway in 1970 against the government’s plan to build a hydroelectric plant at the Mardola waterfall, and in Larzac, in Southern France, in 1971 against the exten- sion of a military base. Environmentalism was also a response to developments in the Cold War. The installation of intermediate range nuclear weapons on the continent by the United States and the Soviet Union starting in 1976 threatened to turn Europe into a nuclear battlefield.

Some environmentalists also moved very quickly into electoral politics. In 1973, ecol- ogy candidates, as they first called themselves, ran in local elections in France. By 1979, Green parties contested national elections in Belgium and West Germany. (Belgium actually had two Green parties, one for the French-speaking Walloon population and the other for the Flemish speakers.) The Belgians were the first to elect Green deputies to parliament but the West German Greens were the most successful, entering the national parliament in 1983 and forming part of a coalition government with the Social Demo- crats in the state of Hesse in 1985. By 1998 they were part of a coalition government at the national level.

These first environmentalists were mostly young people from the cities; many had been involved in the student movement in the 1960s. For example, Joschka Fischer (1948– ) moved from the student movement to the squatters’ movement, in which young people illegally occupied abandoned or otherwise empty buildings, before joining the Greens. In 1985, he became environment minister in the state of Hesse, the first Green to hold

a cabinet post anywhere in West Germany. He became the foreign minister and vice-chancellor in the national government in 1998. The Green program reflected the backgrounds of its leaders: Chal- lenging unrestrained economic growth by defending the environ- ment was part of a broader cri- tique of contemporary politics and society that included support for feminists and peace and human rights advocates. The Greens also sought to practice politics in a new way, creating a system of rotating leaders and refusing to dress in the suits and ties expected of politicians.

In July 1977, some 35,000 people from France, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland gathered in Creys-Malville, France, to protest the nuclear reactor there. The placard on the back of the tractor reads “Nuclear Society, Police Society.”

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.3 Politics in the West

In Their Own Words: Petra Kelly

[W]e as a party are here to stay if we do not make compro- mises when it comes to life and death questions. There is no such thing as a little bit of cancer, or a little bit of malnutri- tion, or a little bit of death, or a little bit of social injustice, or a little bit of torture. It does not help us in any way if we begin accepting, for example, lower and so-called safer levels of radioactivity, or lower and so-called safer levels of lead and dioxin. We must speak out clearly, loudly, and courageously if we know that there are no safe levels. We must not begin to compromise our aims and our demands for the sake of joining others in power, others who are not

yet ready to go on the ecological path, for the sake of wanting to exercise power in those very same institutions which we wanted to transform—not violently but through grass-roots pres- sure and through “Greenpeace” type nonviolent actions and campaigns. (Kelly, 2001, p. 19)

Petra Kelly (1947–1992) was born in a small town in Bavaria that was part of the U.S. zone of occupa- tion following World War II. Her original surname was Lehmann, but she changed it to Kelly when her mother married a U.S. military officer. The family moved to the United States when Kelly was 12 and she lived there until she was 23, when she returned to West Germany in 1970. Her later political activ- ity was influenced by Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, as well as the presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy.

From 1971 until 1983, Kelly worked for the European Commission in Brussels, but she was also active in the peace and environmental movements. She was one of the founders of the Green Party in Ger- many and was a member of parliament from 1983 to 1990. She was murdered in suspicious circum- stances on October 1, 1992, probably by her long-time partner, who also committed suicide.

Petra Kelly, March 1983

Feminism Feminism was not actually “new”: There had been a women’s movement everywhere in Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. However, it had faded into the background after World War I and had to be reinvented after World War II. French feminists declared 1970 “year zero,” but in many countries the women’s liberation movement, as it was known at the time, actually began at the end of the 1960s with women who were frustrated by the failure of the student movement and the New Left to take them seriously. In West Germany, women ended up throwing tomatoes at the men when they refused to listen to a woman who was trying to make a speech during a meeting in Frankfurt in 1968. At the beginning of the 1970s, what came to be called “second-wave” feminism emerged as a political movement.

Common Features of Women’s Liberation Early feminists shared the same body of fundamental texts: Simone de Beauvoir’s The Sec- ond Sex (1949) was joined by newer books, mostly by women in English-speaking countries. Books such as Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963), Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch (1970), and Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics (1972) argued that “traditional” family struc- tures and gender roles severely limited women’s potential. In the late 1970s, the influence

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.3 Politics in the West

of French theorists such as Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray led feminism to emphasize “women’s difference from men [over] equality between the sexes” (Bull, 2000, p. 3).

Early women’s liberation activists also shared several personal characteristics. One scholar described them in the following way:

They were more likely to have had a university education than other women of their generation, of their social origin or even of their family. They tended to choose public sector and intellectual professions. They were less likely to marry and more likely to divorce. If they had children, they tended to have them later than other women of that time and often out of wedlock. (Braidotti, 2000, p. 316)

Across Western Europe, the women’s movement shared numerous features, including “women-only” groups, “consciousness-raising” exercises, and grassroots organizations. In place of hierarchical or centralized leadership, there was a “relaxed structure . . . a loose network of groups and broader networks, projects and organized meetings” (Braidotti, 2000, pp. 318, 328).

Feminists remained independent from established political parties and often adopted separatist positions vis-à-vis men. Most feminists stressed the same issues, especially sexual autonomy and freedom of choice. They used similar tactics, often borrowed from the civil rights movement in the United States, including marches, such as the first “Take Back the Night” in Belgium in 1976, sit-ins, and demonstrations. They also used provo- cation: One early example was the French feminists who placed a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris with a banner that read, “There is always somebody more unknown than the soldier: his wife” (Simonton, 2011, p. 361). In some countries, such as Norway, feminists connected to the peace movement of the 1980s. In this context, lesbians could argue that they were making a political choice by withdrawing from men.

The right to abortions was the single most symbolic issue for women’s liberation. In France, a group of 373 women, including famous actresses like Catherine Deneuve, pub- lished a petition in which they admitted to having had abortions and thus committed a crime. They were followed by 374 women in West Germany who published the following appeal in the weekly magazine Stern in June 1971:

Millions of women have abortions—under humiliating and life-threaten- ing circumstances.

I am one of them.—I had an abortion.

I am opposed to Paragraph 218 and in favor of wanted children.

We women do not want alms from the legislators, nor do we want reform in installments!

We demand the unqualified repeal of Paragraph 218 [which criminalized abortions].

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.3 Politics in the West

We demand comprehensive sex education for everyone and free access to contraceptives!

We demand the right to pregnancy termination that is covered by health insurance! (Brown, Trans., n.d., Two Germanies)

Achievements The women’s movement of the 1970s could boast numerous achievements. Most Euro- pean countries changed a number of laws to meet feminist demands, including providing access to contraception and abortion, amending family law that had made women legally subordinate to men, and criminalizing sexual violence. In Italy in 1976, a petition in favor of abortion garnered 800,000 signatures, and 50,000 women staged a march in Rome. France legalized abortion in 1975, West Germany did so in 1976, and Italy in 1978. Scandinavian women had had access to abor- tions under certain circumstances since the 1930s, but there the laws were liberalized in the early 1970s.

Feminists also created their own cul- tural sphere, one that increasingly influenced the broader culture. Across the continent women’s pub- lishing houses and bookstores, the- aters and art galleries, rock groups, films, and literature emerged. Women’s—later Gender—Studies took its place as a recognized disci- pline in the universities.

Another accomplishment of the “feminist revolution was the in- creased presence of women in Euro- pean political life. Europe got its first female heads of government in this period: Margaret Thatcher in Britain in 1979 and Gro Harlem Brundtland in Norway in 1986. (Eight of the eighteen ministers in Brundtland’s first cabinet were also women.) Even so, by the end of the 1980s, women constituted more than 20 percent of the parliament in only two coun- tries—the Netherlands (21.3 percent) and Denmark (30.7 percent)—and they had reached double digits in only four more: West Germany (16 percent), Italy (13.4 percent), Luxem- bourg (10.9 percent), and Portugal (10 percent) (Kaplan, 1992).

Decline The growth and dynamism of the 1970s was followed by something of a crisis in the 1980s. The more conservative environment of the time was one cause, but developments within the women’s movement were another. Women’s liberation had always been a complex and diverse movement composed of many distinct national and international variations (Bull, 2000), but during the 1980s it fragmented even further as nonwhite women challenged its white, middle-class basis. In West Germany, the decision of some feminists to enter electoral politics as part of the Greens was another line of division.

The women’s liberation movement was decentralized and highly democratic. Le Torchon Brulé (The Burnt Dishrag), whose office is shown in this photo, was one of the first feminist publications in France; it published articles without the editors making any changes to them.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.3 Politics in the West

Populism The 1980s also saw the emergence of a new style of political party known as populist. Populism is a type of politics that “pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous ‘others’ who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity, and voice” (Albertazzi & McDonnell, 2008, p. 3). Unlike environmentalists and feminists whose “ene- mies” were practices such as pollution and sexism, populists defined their “enemies” as specific groups of people, usually immigrants.

Like feminism, populism was not an entirely new phenomenon. Some parties, such as the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), founded in 1929, and the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), founded in 1955, had been around for many years but achieved new popularity after 1980. Others were created in these years: the National Front in France and the Progress Party in Denmark in 1972, the Flemish nationalist Flemish Block in 1978, and the Northern League in Italy in 1989. The most successful of all, Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, was founded in 1993.

Populist parties were usually strongly nationalist, although some, like the Flemish Block, defined their nation in terms of a part of an existing country. Their nationalism also usu- ally included a dose of anti-Americanism and resistance to European unification. These parties were often explicitly anti-immigrant, although this theme would take on greater prominence in the 1990s and especially with the emergence of Islamophobia after 2001. Political scientist Hans-Georg Betz gives the following definition of their approach:

[They are] radical in their rejection of the established socio-cultural and socio-political system and their advocacy of individual achievement, a free market and a drastic reduction in the role of the state” [without being anti- democratic and] right wing . . . in their rejection of individual and social equality and political projects that seek to achieve it . . . in their opposition to the integration of marginalized groups and . . . in their appeal to xeno- phobia, if not outright racism and anti-Semitism. (Betz, 1994, p. 4)

Finally, a strong single leader like the National Front’s Jean-Marie Le Pen or the FPO’s Jorg Haider generally articulated these positions.

The Return of Terrorism Terrorism, which had been absent from Western Europe since the end of anarchist “propa- ganda by the deed” early in the 20th century, returned in these years. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland and the Basque Homeland and Freedom (ETA) in the Basque Country in Spain both used it, with substantial support from the general popu- lation, as a tactic to achieve independent states. Basque terrorism was a direct response to the Franco dictatorship. ETA first used it in 1968 when it killed a policeman. Its most impressive action, and one that would have major implications for Spain’s political future, was the assassination of Franco’s designated successor, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, in December 1973. ETA continued its terror campaigns, and even increased them, follow- ing Spain’s transition to democracy in 1975–1977 and the granting of significant regional autonomy to the Basque region in 1979. The group killed an average of 34 people per year during the 1980s. The IRA claimed many more lives: During what are known as “the

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.3 Politics in the West

Troubles” from the late 1960s to 1998, it killed some 1,800 people, of whom more than 600 were civilians and around 1,100 belonged to the British security forces.

Unlike the IRA and ETA, two other terrorist movements, the Red Army Faction in West Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy, were very small groups of radicals, mostly coming out of the student movement, who had relatively little connection to the broader society. They used terrorism as a means of provoking social revolution.

The Red Army Faction was created in 1970 by Gudrun Ensslin, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof. (Baader, who was in prison for bombing a department store in Frankfurt in 1968, escaped thanks to an armed raid organized by Meinhof.) The document, “Building a Red Army,” written by Ensslin, conveys their approach:

If we don’t build the Red Army then the pigs will be able to do anything, the pigs will be able to go on as usual: Locking people up, firing them, impounding, stealing children, intimidating, shooting, ruling. Pushing the conflicts to a head means they can no longer do what they want, but have to do what we want. (GHDI, n.d., A Terrorist Call)

Ensslin looked to working-class women and what she called the “subproletariat,” socially marginal people without regular jobs, to provide the troops for her new army.

By 1978, the Red Army Faction’s terror campaign had caused the deaths of 28 people through assassinations and bombings. Ninety-three others were wounded and 162 taken hostage. Their most high-profile victims were the head of Daimler Benz, the head of the Dresdner Bank, and the Attorney General of the Federal Republic, all assassinated in 1977. RAF activities diminished thereafter, but as late as 1981 it bombed the U.S. military base at Ramstein (Judt, 2005).

The Italian Red Brigades were responsible for some 370 deaths during the 1970s. The most striking was the March 1978 kidnapping of Aldo Moro, a former Prime Minis- ter and one of the leading figures of the ruling Christian Democratic Party. After holding him hostage for two months, they killed him and left his body in the trunk of a car in the middle of Rome. Unlike the Red Army Faction, the Italian Red Brigades did have some ties to working-class organizations. They were also connected to loosely organized, semiclandestine move- ments and publications that gen- erated ideological justifications

Italian police discover the body of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in the center of Rome, May 8, 1978. He had been kidnapped by the Red Brigades and held for 54 days.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.4 Culture

for terrorism (Judt, 2005). Among these was Autonomia Operaia (Workers’ Autonomy), a group led by Antonio Negri, a lecturer at the University of Padua. Negri was arrested and charged with being morally responsible for murder, but he escaped to France. He later became famous for a major critique of globalization he published in 2000.

The activities of the Red Brigades were part of what came to be called the “years of lead,” a period between 1969 and 1984 in which Italy endured terrorism from both the left and right. The right was responsible for the most lethal attack: In August 1980 a bomb in the Bologna train station killed 85 people. The situation was further complicated by inter- vention by elements of the Italian secret services that were interested in destabilizing the country’s political institutions.

6.4 Culture

European culture underwent some significant changes in this period. Television con-solidated its place as the dominant form of entertainment, mostly at the expense of film. One result was to further the predominance of Hollywood over European producers. This was also a pessimistic age, especially when compared to the optimism and hopefulness of the 1960s.

Television and the Movies

Acquiring a television was one of the markers of the age of prosperity (see chapter 5), and the spread of television produced a significant decline in movie going. The decline was sharpest between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s, but it continued after that so that by the early 1990s, Western Europeans went to the movies far less than did Americans. The average American went to the movies 15 times per year in 1955, 7 in 1977, and 3.9 in 1990–1995; the figures were 10, 3.2, and 2.2 for France and 17, 6.6, and 1.6 for Italy. Movie audiences on both sides of the Atlantic did share one thing in common: They were increas- ingly composed of people under the age of 29 (Sassoon, 2006).

The decline in movie going went hand in hand with increasing U.S. dominance of the mar- ket. By the beginning of the 1990s, films from the United States accounted for 82 percent of ticket sales in West Germany and 72 percent in Spain. Even in France, which had a strong domestic movie industry and a powerful tradition of cultural nationalism and government support for culture, 60 percent of movie tickets were purchased for U.S. movies (Sassoon, 2006). The multiplication of television stations provided another outlet for U.S. films, as pri- vate networks purchased enormous film collections from the United States (Sassoon, 2006).

European countries continued to produce large numbers of films, more than the United States, but these were almost always much less costly productions lacking massive promo- tion budgets and access to large numbers of screens. Only rarely did European films turn out to be commercial blockbusters, but they did retain their cultural prestige. For people around the world who saw cinema more as art than mass entertainment, the big name

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.4 Culture

directors were rarely American and usually Euro- pean: Ingmar Bergman (Sweden), Federico Fellini (Italy), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (West Germany), Pedro Almodovar (Spain), Andrej Wajda (Poland), and Andrei Tarkovsky (Soviet Union).

The increased domination of U.S. popular culture gave rise to yet another bout of anti-American senti- ment. This was most pronounced among the cultural elite, and especially in France. Jack Lang, minister of culture under Francois Mitterand, was particu- larly outspoken. When French television broadcast the soap opera Dallas, he denounced it as a “symbol of American cultural imperialism” and “a threat to the integrity of European culture” (Columbia History of American Television, 2007, p. 372).

No single event focused cultural anti-American- ism more than the announcement that the Dis- ney Corporation was going to open a Disneyland just outside of Paris. The rhetoric was even more exaggerated than usual: Theater director Ariane Mnouchkine called it a “cultural Chernobyl,” refer- ring to the cataclysmic meltdown of a nuclear reac- tor in the Soviet Union only a few years before, while a literary critic in Le Figaro proclaimed the need to defend “universal cultural values.” This time, the complaints went well beyond the usual elites. Farmers and environmentalists protested against the use of land while unions charged that the rules covering how employ- ees were to dress violated French law.

Intellectual Trends

Intellectual life was another area in which Europe, France above all, retained its prestige. Paris remained the hotbed of new ideas. In addition to feminists such as Kristeva and Iri- garay, it produced theorists such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel Foucault. Their work influ- enced academics around the world, perhaps nowhere more than in the United States. Indeed, most of the leading French intellectuals were invited to teach at U.S. universities.

These French intellectuals moved from the concern for the actions of the individual that had been at the center of existentialism to an emphasis on formal structures, especially linguistic structures, and from there to what was called post-structuralism or deconstruc- tion. As Tony Judt has observed,

Two widespread assumptions [were] shared very widely by the intellec- tual community of the time. The first was that power rested . . . upon the monopoly of knowledge. . . . A second assumption . . . was the seductive

Pedro Almodovar is one of the big-name directors who sustains the prestige of European cinema. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), was the breakthrough movie that made him world famous.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.5 Private Life and Family

insistence upon subverting not only the old certainties but the very possi- bility of certainty itself. All behavior, all opinion, all knowledge . . . should be regarded with suspicion (Judt, 2005, p. 479).

The pessimism of intellectuals living in the affluence of democratic Western Europe stands in interesting contrast to the optimism still possible for intellectuals living in the Commu- nist dictatorships of the East. In an influential essay, “The Power of the Powerless” (1978), Czech playwright and dissident Vaclav Havel, argued that even in Communist dictator- ships all individuals, for example “teachers who privately teach young people things that are kept from them in state schools,” retain the potential for subversive action and to act in a meaningful way (Kenney, 2010, p. 26).

It was yet another French intellectual, Jean Francois Lyotard, who proclaimed the arrival of a new historical period: the postmodern. In his book, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979), Lyotard argued that the development of computers and the explosion of science after World War II had changed the fundamental nature of knowledge in Western society. For Lyotard, modernity began with the Enlightenment of the 18th century and was marked by the attempts of philosophers to create grand narratives, what he called “meta- narratives,” that claimed to explain human society and history. The most influential of these was the narrative of progress. Postmodernity, in contrast, is marked by “incredulity towards meta-narratives” and their replacement by innumerable and distinct elements of knowledge, what Lyotard called “clouds”, which “combine in any number of different ways but never cohere into a stable, coherent whole” (Lyotard, 1984, pp. xxiv–xxv).

The ideas of Lyotard and other postmodern thinkers were criticized by the most influen- tial European intellectual from outside France, the German Jürgen Habermas. An advo- cate of the power of reason in public life, he defended the Enlightenment tradition, what in these years came to be called the “Enlightenment project,” which he saw as being attacked by thinkers whose ideas had politically reactionary implications. Habermas’ central concept is what he calls communicative action: “that form of social interaction in which the plans of action of different actors are co-ordinated through an exchange of communicative acts, that is, through a use of language orientated towards reaching understanding” (Habermas, 1981, p. 44). Through communicative action, humans can work toward their emancipation from the powers that threaten to control them, or to “colonize the life world,” to use his language. Feminism and environmentalism were two such emancipatory movements.

6.5 Private Life and Family

The central theme of second-wave feminism was for women to achieve autonomy in their private lives. By 1990, they had made considerable progress in this respect. Pretty much everywhere in Western Europe, women had access to contraceptives, abortion, divorce, and realms of employment that would have been unthinkable in 1960. Marriage was no longer the great goal it had been, and even when women did marry, motherhood was a much less prominent part of their lives. The traditional ideal of wife and mother had not been destroyed, but European women had more choices about how to live their lives.

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.5 Private Life and Family

The Decline of Marriage

Some of these changes preceded the reemergence of feminism and were instead products of the sexual revolution that began in Sweden in the 1960s. Young people began cohabitat- ing (living together without being married), and within a couple of decades this became an almost obligatory preparation for marriage.

At the same time, marriage became a less likely outcome of romantic relationships, as fewer couples who lived together actually got married within five years. This reflected an over- all decline in marriage: In the 1950s only 10 percent of European women never married; by the end of the 20th century the figure was between 30 percent and 40 percent in many countries (Simonton, 2011). In France, the number of marriages fell from 416,000 in 1972 to only 265,000 in 1987 (Braidotti, 2000). When women did marry, they did so later in life. In 1970, Danish, Dutch, and German women married between 22 and 23 years old on aver-

age. Thirty years later, they married between 28 and 30. What women expected from marriage and from their husbands also changed:

[They] sought a genuine partnership [but] they also wanted more freedom within it. . . . instead of doing every- thing together, the idea that women and men could have separate inter- ests and activities and still share a warm, loving relationship became more valued. Equality in relation- ships was about mutual respect and goals, egalitarian decision making and a balanced power relationship. (Simonton, 2011, p. 301)

Once married, women stayed married for shorter periods as divorce became easier to get, and more people took advantage of it. Even in Italy and Spain, where the Catholic Church remained influ- ential, divorce was legalized quite early: in 1971 in Italy and 1981 in Spain, only six years after the end of the Franco regime. For Europe as a whole, the divorce rate doubled between 1965 and 1985, although there were very marked national differ- ences, as Figure 6.5 demonstrates.

In May 1974, 60 percent of Italian voters rejected a proposal to repeal the divorce law passed in 1971. In this photo, a woman carries a placard reading “No to the abolition of divorce.”

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CHAPTER 6Section 6.5 Private Life and Family

A nn

ua l D

iv or

ce R

at e

(p er

1 ,0

00 p

eo pl

e)

1960–69

Year 1970–79 1980–89

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Belgium

Denmark

France

West Germany

Netherlands

Norway

Sweden

As divorce became easier to get after the 1960s, many European countries experienced a significant increase in divorce rates.

Figure 6.5: Divorce rate, 1960–1990

The Decline in Fertility

European women also had fewer children. The fertility rate dropped dramatically after 1970, and by 1990, it had fallen below the replacement rate, the rate at which the popula- tion of a country reproduces itself: 2.1 children per woman in childbearing age. The sharp- est declines came in such nominally strong Catholic countries as Spain and Italy.

This new demographic would have important implications. On the one hand, as the aver- age age of Europeans rose and the number of people 65 years or older increased, the cost of social services, especially pensions and medical care, increased as well. On the other, the decreasing number of children being born meant that there would be fewer workers— and taxpayers—providing the money to meet those costs. From 1960 to 1980, the number of people between 15 and 64 for each person 65 or older—that is, the number of people of working age for each retiree—fell from 5.32 to 4.57 in France, from 5.52 to 3.94 in Sweden, from 6.25 to 4.27 in West Germany, and from 7.81 to 5.88 in Spain, and the decline was accelerating (Broadberry & O’Rourke, 2010).

The Family: Change or Decline?

The developments of the 1970s and 1980s were so marked that, in the eyes of some commen- tators, they had wrought a fundamental change on the European family, turning it into what sociologists Rosella Palomba and Hein Moors called a “partnership of individuals. Mem- bers of the family have gained greater independence and the right to live their own lives.” Palomba herself was even more negative, announcing the end of “the long term family proj- ect” and its transformation into a “short-term amusement connection” (Berend, 2006, p. 14).

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CHAPTER 6Chapter Summary

Conclusion

Europe in 1991 was, in some ways, a very different place than it had been twenty years earlier. Most significant, of course, was the disappearance of the Communist regimes. The economic crisis had ended the unprecedented prosperity of the pre- vious period and forced Europeans to confront new difficulties. There were new politi- cal movements and challenges to the welfare state. In other ways, the changes were less fundamental. Social and demographic changes that had begun earlier continued. So too did the process of unification: The EEC took on new tasks and admitted six new mem- bers. Despite the challenges, the welfare state and the European Social Model remained in place, backed up by broad popular support. The artificial division of the continent into East and West that was the principal legacy of World War II was over, but Europe now had to confront the legacy of four decades of very separate development. As it moved from the 20th century and into the 21st, would Europeans overcome these divisions?

Chapter Summary

Politics in Communist Europe • New Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to revitalize the Soviet Union after

two decades of stagnation. • The changes made by Gorbachev, and especially his refusal to intervene mili-

tarily in other Communist countries, contributed to the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989–1990.

• Communism collapsed peacefully everywhere except Romania. Both dissident movements and reformist elements within the Communist Party played a role.

• The collapse of the Communist regime in East Germany led to the reunification of Germany in 1990.

• The emergence of nationalist movements and demands for greater reform led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Economy: The End of the Golden Age • Massive increases in the price of oil led to serious reductions in economic growth,

increased inflation, and widespread unemployment in Western Europe after 1973. • The process of European unification continued: Six new members were admitted

and the Single European Act (1986) gave the EEC new responsibilities. • The Western European economy experienced a number of structural changes: the

decline of industry, the rise of services, and the increasing presence of women in the workforce.

Politics in the West • The dictatorships in Portugal, Spain, and Greece were replaced by democratic

systems, although the process was different in each country. • The postwar consensus around Keynesian economics was challenged by the rise

of neoliberalism. Margaret Thatcher was the leading European representative of this trend.

• New political movements emerged in this period: environmentalism, feminism, and populism.

• Terrorism reappeared in several countries.

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CHAPTER 6End-of-Chapter Review

Culture • Television became increasingly prominent, and the cultural influence of the

United States continued to grow. • Europe, and especially France, retained its prestige as the home of new intellec-

tual developments.

Private Life and Family • There were significant changes in private life and the family: Marriage became

less common, divorce rates increased, and the fertility rates of European women declined.

End-of-Chapter Review

1. Which Soviet leader is most closely associated with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe?

a. Khrushchev b. Gorbachev c. Brezhnev d. Stalin

2. What King played a key role in stabilizing democracy during this period?

a. Juan Carlos of Spain b. Manuel of Portugal c. Stockhard of Sweden d. Charles of England

3. Which is NOT an example of a “populist” Party?

a. Helmut Kohl’s German Christian Democrats b. Austrian Jurg Haider’s Freedom Party c. Italian Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia d. France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front

4. How did the movies fare in Europe after 1975?

a. Europeans went to more of them, but more were American made b. Europeans went to more of them, and more were European made c. Europeans went to fewer of them, but more were European made d. Europeans went to fewer of them, and fewer were European made

5. Gross domestic production per capita in Eastern Europe compared to Western Europe in 1990 was about

a. 1 percent b. 10 percent c. 35 percent d. 120 percent

Answers: 1) b, 2) a, 3) a, 4) d, 5) c

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CHAPTER 6Web Links

Thought Questions

• What were the principal causes of the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe?

• Why did the collapse of Communism entail so little violence? • What were the main ways in which the Western European economy changed

after 1973? • What were the most important political developments in Western Europe in

this period? • Why did the European welfare state prove so resilient? • What developments permitted U.S. cultural influence to grow in these years? • What was the main factor driving the changes in private and family life?

Web Links

The Power of the Powerless Czech dissident and future president Vaclav Havel writes about the possibility of dissent under a Communist dictatorship. http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165havel.html

Perestroika This was a central part of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s strategy for revitalizing the Soviet Union. http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111perestroi.html

Working Women Communist countries prided themselves on providing greater equality to women than did capitalist ones, but the situation of working women was not necessarily good, as this account by a female engineer from East Germany suggests. http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1107

The Program of the Green Party The German Green Party was founded in 1980 and issued its first program the follow- ing year. In addition to environmental issues, it emphasized social equality, grass roots democracy, and peaceful methods for political change. http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1120

Society? There Is No Such Thing! This interview she gave to Woman’s Own magazine in 1987 contains the most famous statement Margaret Thatcher ever made, one that embodies the resurgent conservative ideology she embodied. www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689

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CHAPTER 6Key Terms

Key Terms

ETA Movement in Basque land of Spain, meaning Basque Homeland and Freedom, which favored an independent Basque country and used violent means to bring it about.

Glasnost Russian term associated with rule of Mikhail Gorbachev, meaning “openness,” reflecting an attempt at more transparent public policies.

Green parties Parties stressing the impor- tance of the environment.

Helsinki Accords 1975 international agreement which provided for human rights protections in all countries, often cited by Eastern Bloc dissidents.

Neoliberalism Doctrine championed by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and other conservatives, which, without abandoning the welfare state, sought to reduce the role of government in terms of ownership, taxation, and regulation.

Perestroika Russian term associate with rule of Mikhail Gorbachev, meaning restructuring, an attempt at reforming the rigid bureaucracy.

Plastic People of the Universe Rock group that was influential in political dis- sent movement in Czechoslovakia.

Red Army Faction West German left- wing terrorist movement active in the 1960s and 1970s.

Single European Act 1986 agreement expanding the powers of the European Economic Community, the precursor to today’s European Union.

Solidarity Name of Polish trade union, originating in Gdansk shipyards, which led the fight for political reform in Poland.

Era of Stagnation Term associated with the rule of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev (1964–1982) during which little was accomplished.

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