CHAPTER 30 Challenging the Postwar Order

Transcription

1 CHAPTER 30 Challenging the Postwar Order INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES After reading and studying this chapter, students should be able to: 1. Describe how the social and political changes of the 1960s contributed to a criticism of the postwar consensus that had developed in the 1950s. 2. Discuss how economic decline in the 1970s led to social and political change in western Europe and North America in the 1980s. 3. List the internal and external factors that weakened communist power in the East Bloc, and show how Gorbachev tried to reform the system from above. 4. Explain why anticommunist revolutions swept through eastern Europe in 1989, and describe the immediate consequences. CHAPTER OUTLINE I. Reform and Protest in the 1960s A. Cold War Tensions Thaw 1. Buoyed by the rapidly expanding economy of the postwar era, the political consensus in western Europe shifted to the left. 2. In Britain, the Labour Party returned to power in In the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, Social Democratic parties maintained a leading role throughout the period. 4. In West Germany, Willy Brandt ( ) became the first Social Democratic West German chancellor in While the Cold War continued to rage outside Europe and generally defined relations between the Soviet Union and the United States, western Europe began to pursue a policy of détente, the progressive relaxation of Cold War tensions. 6. In December 1970 Willy Brandt flew to Poland for the signing of a historic treaty of reconciliation. 7. Brandt also laid a wreath at the tomb of the Polish unknown soldier and another at the monument commemorating the armed uprising of Warsaw s Jewish ghetto against occupying Nazi armies; these actions and the treaty were part of his policy of reconciliation with eastern Europe, termed Ostpolitik. 8. Brandt, believing that a new foreign policy was needed, negotiated treaties with the Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia that formally accepted existing state boundaries 1

2 in return for a mutual renunciation of force or the threat of force. 9. The policy of détente reached its high point when the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union, and thirty-two European nations signed the Final Act of the Helsinki Conference in 1975, agreeing that Europe s existing political frontiers could not be changed by force. 10. They also accepted numerous provisions guaranteeing the human rights and political freedoms of their citizens, and although the East continued to violate human rights guarantees, the agreement was generally effective in maintaining international peace. 11. Social Democrats maintained a firm commitment to capitalist free markets and democratic electoral politics, while at the same time viewing welfare provisions as a way to ameliorate the inevitable inequalities of a competitive market economy. 12. As a result, Western European democracies spent more and more state funds on health care, education, old-age insurance, and public housing. B. The Affluent Society 1. High wages meant that more and more people could afford the goods and gadgets provided by the consumer revolution that began in the 1950s. 2. Labor-saving devices in family homes such as vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, washing machines, and many others transformed women s housework. 3. The establishment of U.S.-style self-service supermarkets across Europe changed the way food was produced, purchased, and prepared, and threatened to put local bakers, butchers, and neighborhood grocers out of business. 4. Europeans at all levels of society had more money to spend on leisure time and recreational pursuits; perhaps the most astonishing leisure-time development was the blossoming of mass travel and tourism. 5. By the late 1960s packaged tours with cheap group flights and bargain hotel accommodations had made even distant lands easily accessible to the middle class and much of the working class. 6. At home, more and more Europeans oriented their leisure time around television, sitting at home in the evenings to watch news and entertainment and the latest American imports. 7. Intellectuals and cultural critics worried that rampant consumerism was wiping out regional and national traditions and undermining intellectual activity. 8. Others complained bitterly that these changes threatened to Americanize European culture; although such worries were overstated, social change was unavoidable. 9. The moral authority of religious doctrine lost ground before the 2

3 growing individualism of consumer society; church membership declined, and fewer Europeans attended regular Sunday services. 10. At the Second Vatican Council, convened from 1962 to 1965, Catholic leaders agreed on a number of reforms meant to broaden the church s appeal, including saying Mass in local languages and embracing a new openness in Catholic theology. 11. Their resolutions did little to halt the slide toward secularization, a trend that was even more pronounced in Protestant lands such as Great Britain, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and most of West Germany. 12. Family ties also weakened in the age of affluence: men and women married later, the nuclear family became smaller and more mobile, divorce rates rose rapidly, and the number of adults living alone grew remarkably. C. The Growing Counterculture Movement 1. One of the dramatic results of economic prosperity and a more tolerant society was the emergence of a youthful counterculture, which came of age in the mid-1960s to challenge the assumptions of the affluent society. 2. Children born during the postwar baby boom grew up in an era of political liberalism and material affluence; they learned about the horrors of World War II s totalitarian governments, watched colonial peoples forge new paths to freedom, and worried about the growing conformity that seemed inherent to the consumer society. 3. Baby boomers had the education and perhaps most importantly the freedom from material want to act on their concerns about inequality and social justice. 4. Counterculture movements in Europe drew inspiration from the American civil rights movement of the early 1960s, in which African Americans effectively challenged segregation and repression through court cases, public demonstrations, sit-ins, and bus boycotts. 5. The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination in public services and on the job, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed all African Americans the right to vote, were the crowning achievements of the long struggle against racism. 6. At the University of California Berkeley in 1964 and 1965, students consciously adapted the tactics of the civil rights movement to challenge limits on free speech and academic freedom at the university. 7. The youth movement came of age, as students across the United States and in western Europe, where rigid rules controlled student activities at overcrowded new universities, engaged in active protests. 8. Many student activists in western Europe and the United States 3

4 embraced an updated, romanticized version of Marxism, creating a movement that came to be known as the New Left. 9. Adherents of the New Left argued for a more humanitarian style of socialism, a rather vaguely defined Marxist program that could avoid the worst excesses of both capitalism and Sovietstyle Communism. 10. Much counterculture activity revolved around a lifestyle rebellion that had broader appeal. 11. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the so-called sexual revolution, which was characterized by frank discussion about sexuality, a new willingness to engage in premarital sex, and a growing acceptance of homosexuality. 12. The development of the birth-control pill, which went on the market in most western European countries in the 1960s, eliminated the risk of unwanted pregnancy and facilitated sexual experimentation. 13. For the young, the idea of sexual emancipation was closely linked to radical politics: sexual openness and free love, the sixties generation argued, moved people beyond traditional norms and provided a potential foundation for a more humane society. 14. Although some aspects of the sexual revolution are easily exaggerated, during the 1960s and 1970s more young people engaged in sexual intercourse, and they did so at an earlier age than ever before. 15. Along with sexual openness, drug use and rock music were part of the lifestyle revolt; using drugs was a way to break free from conventional morals to turn on, tune in, and drop out, in the infamous words of the American cult figure Timothy Leary. 16. Rock bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and many others sang songs that championed countercultural lifestyles. D. The United States and Vietnam 1. The growth of the counterculture movement was closely linked to the course of the Vietnam War. 2. Although many student radicals at the time believed that imperialism was the main cause, American involvement in Vietnam was more clearly a product of the Cold War and the policy of containment. 3. After the South Vietnamese government in 1955 declined to hold free elections that would unify the north and south zones, U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower (r ) provided South Vietnam with military aid. 4. President John F. Kennedy (r ) later increased the number of American military advisers in South Vietnam, and in 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson (r ) extended massive military aid, along with a half million American troops. 5. In the end, the American strategy of limited warfare it did not invade North Vietnam or set up a naval blockade backfired: 4

5 the American people grew weary and the American leadership cracked. 6. Although American politicians, the media, and the U.S. population as a whole initially saw the war as part of a legitimate defense against communist totalitarianism in all poor countries, an antiwar movement quickly emerged on college campuses. 7. Faced with the prospect of being drafted, in October 1965 student protesters joined forces with old-line socialists, New Left intellectuals, and pacifists in antiwar demonstrations in fifty American cities. 8. Criticism reached a crescendo after the Vietcong Tet Offensive in January 1968, which signaled that the war was not close to ending, as Washington had claimed. 9. America s leaders lost heart, and within months President Johnson announced that he would not stand for reelection and called for negotiations with North Vietnam. 10. President Richard M. Nixon (r ) sought to gradually disengage America from Vietnam beginning in 1968, suspending the draft, so hated on college campuses, and cutting American forces in Vietnam from 550,000 to 24,000 in four years. 11. Nixon finally reached a peace agreement with North Vietnam in 1973 that allowed remaining American forces to complete their withdrawal. 12. When North Vietnam launched a general invasion against South Vietnamese armies in 1974, the U.S. Congress refused to permit any American military response, and the South Vietnamese were forced in 1975 to accept a unified country under a communist dictatorship. E. Student Revolts and In the late 1960s many politically active students believed that the United States was fighting an immoral and imperialistic war in Vietnam against a small and heroic people, and the counterculture became increasingly radical. 2. European and American students demonstrating against the war eventually extended their protests to support colonial independence movements, to demand an end to the nuclear arms race, and to call for world peace and liberation from social conventions of all kinds. 3. Youth activism erupted in 1968, as African Americans rioted across the United States after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and antiwar demonstrators battled police at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. 4. In Mexico City, police shot and killed several hundred protesters calling for political reform, and students in Tokyo demonstrated against the war in Vietnam. 5. Students in Warsaw marched to protest government censorship, 5

6 and youths in Prague were in the forefront of the attempt to radically reform communism from within. 6. In France in May 1968, a group of angry students inspired by New Left ideals occupied buildings and took over the University of Paris, which led to violent clashes with police and triggered a national revolt in which some 10 million workers went out on strike, bringing the French economy to a standstill. 7. In the end, however, the idealistic but vaguely expressed goals of the radical students did not really correspond to the breadand-butter demands of the striking workers, who returned to work after receiving government promises of workplace reforms and immediate pay raises. 8. In new elections called by President de Gaulle, his conservative party won almost 75 percent of the seats in the French parliament, showing that the majority of the French people did not support general strikes or student-led revolutions. 9. As the political enthusiasm of the counterculture waned in the 1970s, committed activists were divided among themselves about the best way to continue to fight for social change. 10. Counterculture protests generated a great deal of excitement and trained a generation of activists, but New Left ideologies that focused on alienation and dehumanization captured in slogans like Power to the Imagination resulted in little practical political change. 11. Lifestyle rebellions involving sex, drugs, and rock music did indeed transform individual behavior, but they hardly led to revolution. F. The 1960s in the East Bloc 1. The building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 suggested that communism was here to stay, and the failure of NATO to intervene showed that the United States and western Europe basically accepted the premise. 2. It was clear to socialist leaders in the East that East Bloc economies lagged behind those of the West, and so they implemented cautious forms of decentralization and limited market policies, with mixed results. 3. Hungary s so-called New Economic Mechanism, which broke up state monopolies, allowed some private retail stores, and encouraged private agriculture, was perhaps most successful. 4. East Germany s New Economic System brought limited privatization and also showed moderate success, though it was reversed when the government returned to centralization in the late 1960s. 5. In other East bloc countries, however, economic growth flagged. 6. Recognizing that the emphasis on heavy industry could lead to popular discontent, Communist planning commissions redirected resources to the consumer sector, with uneven 6

7 results. 7. In the 1960s Communist regimes also granted cautious cultural freedoms that allowed dissidents like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Boris Pasternak to publish critical works of fiction. 8. In East Germany, the regime encouraged intellectuals to take a more critical view of life in the East Bloc, so long as they did not directly oppose communism itself. 9. Despite some cultural openness, the most outspoken dissidents were harassed and often forced to emigrate to the West, and an underground samizdat literature critical of communism emerged in the Soviet Union and the East Bloc. 10. Modest prosperity and limited cultural tolerance only went so far, and the limits on reform were sharply revealed in Czechoslovakia during the 1968 Prague spring. 11. In January 1968 the reform elements in the Czechoslovak Communist Party gained a majority and voted out the long-time Stalinist leader in favor of Alexander Dubček ( ), whose new government launched dramatic reforms. 12. Although Dubček constantly proclaimed his loyalty to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, the determination of the Czechoslovak reformers to build a more liberal and democratic socialism frightened hard-line Communists. 13. When 500,000 Russian and allied eastern European troops suddenly occupied Czechoslovakia in August 1968, the Czechoslovaks made no attempt to resist militarily, surrendered to Soviet demands, and abandoned any reform programs. 14. Shortly after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev ( ) declared the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine, asserting the right of the Soviet Union and its allies to intervene in any socialist country whenever they saw the need. II. Changing Consensus in Western Europe A. Economic Crisis and Hardship 1. Starting in the early 1970s the West entered into a long period of economic decline that was caused in part by the collapse of the international monetary system, which since 1945 had been based on the American dollar, valued in gold at $35 an ounce. 2. The value of American currency had been weakened by the United States postwar spending on foreign aid and foreign wars; when President Nixon tried to reverse this trend by abruptly stopping the exchange of U.S. currency for gold, the value of the dollar fell even more sharply, and inflation accelerated worldwide. 3. Fixed rates of exchange were abandoned, and great uncertainty replaced postwar predictability in international trade and finance. 4. Even more damaging to the global economy was the dramatic 7

8 reversal in the price and availability of energy that occurred when OPEC declared an embargo on oil shipments to the United States in retaliation for the United States providing military aid to Israel, which had successfully defended itself against a surprise Arab attack in October Coming on the heels of upheaval in the international monetary system, the explosion in energy prices plunged the world into a serious economic decline: unemployment rose; productivity and living standards declined; inflation soared. 6. By 1976 a modest recovery was in progress, until a fundamentalist Islamic revolution struck Iran and oil production collapsed in that country, sending the world economy into a second oil shock. 7. Economists coined a new term stagflation to describe the combination of low growth and high inflation that led to a worldwide recession. 8. Although anxious observers worried that the Common Market would disintegrate in the face of severe economic dislocation, the nations of the European Economic Community cooperated even more closely, and the movement toward unity for western Europe stayed alive. 9. The developing world was hit hard by slowed growth, widening the gap between rich and poor countries and causing governments in South America, sub-saharan Africa, and South Asia to borrow heavily from Western bankers in attempts to restructure their economies. 10. At the same time, the East Asian tiger economies of Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan where labor costs were comparatively inexpensive started exporting high-tech consumer goods to the West, which shifted manufacturing jobs away from the highly industrialized countries of northern Europe. 11. By the end of the 1970s, the foundations of economic growth had begun shifting to high-tech information industries, such as computing and biotechnology, and to services, including medicine, banking, and finance a change described as the arrival of the information age or postindustrial society. 12. As heavy industry lost ground, factories closed, leading to the emergence of rust belts formerly industrialized areas that were now ghost lands, such as the Ruhr district in northwest West Germany and the factory belts around Detroit, Michigan. 13. Ordinary people were hard hit by the crisis, and there were heartbreaking human tragedies lost jobs, bankruptcies, homelessness, and mental breakdowns. 14. Yet on the whole, the welfare system fashioned in the postwar era prevented mass suffering and degradation and undoubtedly contributed to the preservation of political stability and democracy in the face of economic difficulties. 8

9 15. Governments enthusiastic support of social needs helps explain the sharp rise in government spending during the 1970s and early 1980s, but the willingness of people to see their governments increase spending even as they resisted higher taxes contributed to budget deficits, national debts, and inflation. B. The Conservative Backlash 1. The transition to a postindustrial society was led by a new generation of political leaders who were willing to make the difficult reforms necessary to restructure the economy. 2. The post World War II consensus that economic growth and social stability were best achieved through full employment, limited government regulation, and generous welfare provisions began to unravel in the 1970s, as economies weakened and global competition increased. 3. The new conservatives of the 1980s followed a philosophy that came to be known as neoliberalism, the main goal of which was to increase private profits, which neoliberals believed to be the real engine of economic growth. 4. Neoliberal theorists like U.S. economist Milton Friedman argued that government should cut spending on social services such as housing, education, and health insurance; limit business subsidies; and retreat from regulation of all kinds. 5. The broad shift toward greater conservatism, coupled with growing voter dissatisfaction with high taxes and runaway state budgets, helped elect Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925) prime minister of Great Britain in A member of the Conservative Party and a convinced neoliberal, Thatcher pushed through a series of controversial free-market policies that cut spending on health care, education, and public housing, scaling back the role of government and transforming postwar Britain. 7. Conservatives reduced taxes and privatized or sold off government-run enterprises. 8. Though she never eliminated all social programs, Thatcher s policies helped replace the interventionist ethos of the welfare state with a greater reliance on private enterprise and the free market. 9. The significant human costs involved in this transition included unemployment rates that soared over 12 percent, a widening gap between rich and poor, and increasing discontent and crime exacerbated by poverty. 10. In the United States, two-term president Ronald Reagan (r ) followed a similar path, though his success in cutting government was more limited. 11. Reagan s campaign slogan government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem summed up the movement s neoliberal philosophy. 9

10 12. In 1981 Reagan pushed through major cuts in income taxes all across the board, but he failed to inhibit government spending, which increased as a percentage of national income during his presidency. 13. Both Reagan s massive military buildup and rapid growth in spending on social programs contributed to the soaring U.S. budget deficit. 14. West Germany also turned to the right as Christian Democrat Helmut Kohl (b. 1930) became the new chancellor in Like Thatcher, Kohl cut taxes and government spending, which led to solid economic growth, so that by the mid-1980s West Germany was one of the most prosperous countries in the world. 16. In foreign policy, Kohl drew close to President Reagan, which contributed to renewed superpower tensions. 17. After his election as president in 1981, François Mitterrand ( ) and his Socialist Party led France on a lurch to the left, marking a significant change in French politics. 18. Mitterrand launched a vast program of nationalization and public investment designed to spend the country out of economic stagnation, but by 1983 this attempt had clearly failed, compelling the Socialists to reprivatize industries nationalized during the first term and impose a variety of austerity measures. 19. Despite persistent economic crises and high social costs, by 1990 the developed nations of western Europe and North America were far more productive than they had been in the early 1970s. C. Challenges and Victories for Women 1. The arrival of a broad-based feminist movement devoted to securing genuine gender equality and promoting the general interests of women arose out of changing patterns of motherhood and paid work. 2. Another factor was the powerful critique of gender relations articulated by feminist intellectuals, which stimulated many women to rethink their assumptions and challenge the status quo. 3. Dissatisfied women recognized that they had to band together if they were to influence politics and secure fundamental reforms. 4. Feminists were inspired by works such as the foundational book The Second Sex (1949) by French writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir ( ). 5. In the United States, American writer and organizer Betty Friedan s ( ) revealing study The Feminine Mystique (1963) pointed the way for a broad-based feminist movement that spread during the late 1960s and the 1970s. 6. The new feminists attacked patriarchy, the domination of society by men, and sexism, the inequalities faced by women 10

11 simply because they were female. 7. Advocates of women s rights pushed for new statutes in the workplace: laws against discrimination, equal pay for equal work, and measures such as maternal leave and affordable day care designed to help women combine careers and family responsibilities. 8. The movement also concentrated on gender and family questions, including the right to divorce (in some Catholic countries), legalized abortion, the needs of single mothers, and protection from rape and physical violence. 9. As the sharply focused women s movement of the 1970s won new rights for women, the movement became more diffuse, a victim of both its successes and the resurgence of an antifeminist opposition. 10. Many newly empowered women were active in other movements such as the antinuclear peace movement, which had its roots in the anti-vietnam protests of the 1960s and took on new life as the Cold War heated up in the late 1970s. D. The Rise of the Environmental Movement 1. Early environmentalists drew inspiration from writers like biologist Rachel Carson, whose book Silent Spring, published in the United States in 1962, was quickly translated into twelve European languages. 2. By the 1970s the destructive environmental costs of industrial development were everywhere apparent, inspiring a growing ecology movement to challenge government and industry to clean up their acts. 3. The new ecologists worked to lessen the effects of unbridled industrial development on the natural environment, and they linked local environmental issues to poverty, inequality, and violence on a global scale. 4. Some environmental groups used the mass media to reach potential supporters; some worked closely with politicians and public officials to change state policies; and still others took a more activist stance. 5. In 1971 Canadian activists established Greenpeace, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to environmental conservation and protection that quickly grew into an international organization, with strong support in Europe and the United States. 6. In West Germany in 1979 environmentalists founded the Green Party, a political party intended to fight for environmental causes that was successful in electing members to parliament in the 1983 elections. E. Separatism and Right-Wing Extremism 1. Europe in the 1970s also saw the rise of determined separatist movements, as regional ethnic groups struggled for special rights, political autonomy, and even national independence from 11

12 ruling governments. 2. This new separatist nationalism was most violent in Spain and Northern Ireland, where well-established insurgent groups used terrorist attacks to win government concessions. 3. In the ethnic Basque region of northern Spain, the ETA (short for Basque Homeland and Freedom) used bombings and assassinations to force the government to grant territorial independence. 4. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), a paramilitary organization in Northern Ireland, used similar tactics against the British security forces who occupied the district. 5. Mainstream European politicians also faced challenges from new political forces on the far right such as the French National Front, which opposed European integration and promised a return to traditional national customs. 6. New right politicians promoted themselves as the champions of ordinary (white) workers, complaining that immigrants swelled welfare rolls and stole jobs from native-born Europeans. III. The Decline of Really Existing Socialism A. State and Society in the East Bloc 1. By the 1970s Communist leaders in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union adopted the term really existing socialism to describe the accomplishments of their societies in achieving many of the professed goals of communism. 2. Agriculture had been successfully collectivized, industry and business had been nationalized, and class leveling had significantly closed the gap between rich and poor. 3. An extensive system of government-supported welfare benefits included free medical care, guaranteed employment, inexpensive public transportation, and heavily subsidized rent and food costs. 4. Everyday life under really existing socialism was defined by an uneasy mixture of outward conformity and private disengagement or apathy. 5. East Bloc living standards were well above those in the developing world, but well below living standards in the West. 6. Centralized economic planning continued to lead to shortages of the most basic goods, and people complained about poor quality and lack of choice. 7. Women in particular experienced the contradictions of the socialist system: the state advocated equal rights for women and encouraged them to join the workforce while at the same time rarely allowing them into the upper ranks of business or politics. 8. And East Bloc women faced the same double burden as those in the West on top of their full-time jobs, they were expected to 12

13 do the shopping, the cooking, and the cleaning at home. 9. The countries of eastern Europe were hit hard by the energy crisis and stagflation of the 1970s, but East Bloc leaders resisted making the economic reforms that might have made the socialist system more effective. 10. The transformation to Western-style postindustrial societies would have required fundamental changes in the Communist system that would have undermined the livelihoods and support of the working-class constituencies, which were already showing signs of wear. 11. East Bloc regimes also refused to cut spending on the welfare state, which was, after all, one of the proudest achievements of socialism. 12. As industrial goods produced in the East Bloc became increasingly uncompetitive in the new global system, governments borrowed massive amounts from Western banks and governments, setting up a cycle of indebtedness. 13. The best career and educational opportunities were reserved for party members or handed out as political favors, leaving many talented people underemployed and resentful. 14. Tight controls on travel continually called attention to the burdens of daily life in a repressive society. 15. The one-party state repeatedly squashed popular reform movements, while the liberal freedoms and consumer prosperity of the West were evident for all to see on television. 16. Many East Bloc citizens came to doubt the legitimacy of communism altogether: the dream of distributing goods from each according to his means, to each according to his needs (as Marx had once put it) hardly made up for the great weaknesses of really existing socialism. B. Reform Movements in Czechoslovakia and Poland 1. Remembering a history of violent repression and Soviet invasion, reformists in Poland and Czechoslovakia carefully avoided direct challenges to government leaders. 2. Instead, they worked to build a civil society from below to create a realm of freedom beyond formal politics, where civil liberties and human rights could be exercised within the Communist system. 3. In Czechoslovakia in 1977 a group of citizens that included future Czechoslovak president Václav Havel signed a manifesto known as Charter 77 in which they criticized the government for ignoring the human rights provision of the Helsinki Accords and called on Communist leaders to respect civil and human rights. 4. Despite government retaliation, Czech leaders challenged passive acceptance of Communist authority and contributed to growing public dissatisfaction with really existing socialism. 5. In Poland, the Communists had failed to monopolize society and to manage the economy effectively, and the lack of 13

14 economic improvement motivated Poland s working class to rise up in angry protest in the 1970s. 6. Bureaucratic incompetence and the first oil shock in 1973 put the Polish economy into a nosedive, and in August 1980 the sixteen thousand workers at the gigantic Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk laid down their tools and occupied the plant. 7. As other workers joined in solidarity, the strikers advanced the ideals of civil society, including the right to form free-trade unions, freedom of speech, release of political prisoners, and economic reforms. 8. After eighteen days of shipyard occupation, the government gave in and accepted the workers demands in the Gdansk Agreement. 9. Led by feisty Lenin Shipyards electrician and devout Catholic Lech Walesa (b. 1943), the workers proceeded to organize a free and democratic trade union called Solidarity and to work cautiously to shape an active civil society. 10. Joined by intellectuals and supported by the Catholic Church, Solidarity became a national union and enjoyed tremendous public support, as cultural and intellectual freedom blossomed. 11. Solidarity practiced moderation, refusing to challenge directly the Communist monopoly on political power. 12. After a confrontation in March 1981, Walesa settled for minor government concessions, leading to criticism of his moderate leadership and a gradual loss in Solidarity s cohesiveness. 13. The Polish Communist leadership shrewdly denounced Solidarity for promoting economic collapse, and in December 1981 Communist leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski suddenly proclaimed martial law and arrested Solidarity s leaders. 14. Millions of Poles decided to continue acting as if they were free, and popular support for outlawed Solidarity remained strong under martial law in the 1980s, preparing the way for the union s political rebirth toward the end of the decade. 15. The rise and survival of Solidarity showed the desire of millions of eastern Europeans for greater political liberty and the enduring appeal of cultural freedom, trade-union rights, patriotic nationalism, and religious feeling. C. From Détente Back to Cold War 1. The Soviets and the leaders of the Soviet satellite states also faced challenges from abroad, as optimistic hopes for détente in international relations gradually faded in the late 1970s. 2. Brezhnev s Soviet Union ignored the human rights provisions of the Helsinki agreement, and East-West political competition remained very much alive outside Europe. 3. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 caused many Americans to fear that the oil-rich states of the Persian Gulf would be next, and they looked to the NATO alliance and military might to thwart communist expansion. 14

15 4. U.S. president Jimmy Carter (r ) tried to lead NATO beyond verbal condemnation and urged economic sanctions against the Soviet Union, but only Great Britain among the European allies supported the American initiative. 5. The U.S. military buildup launched by Carter in his last years in office was greatly accelerated by President Reagan, who was swept into office in 1980 by a wave of patriotism and economic discontent. 6. The new American leadership acted as if the military balance had tipped in favor of the Soviet Union, which Reagan anathematized as the evil empire, and it increased defense spending enormously. 7. The broad shift toward greater conservatism in the 1980s gave Reagan invaluable allies in western Europe. 8. Margaret Thatcher worked well with Reagan and was a forceful advocate for a revitalized Atlantic alliance, and under Helmut Kohl West Germany and the United States once again coordinated military and political policy toward the Soviet bloc. D. Gorbachev s Reforms in the Soviet Union 1. Though the massive state and party bureaucracy safeguarded the Soviet Union s Communist Party elite, it promoted apathy in the masses. 2. When the ailing Brezhnev finally died in 1982, his successor, the long-time chief of the secret police, Yuri Andropov ( ), tried to invigorate the system, but relatively little came of these efforts. 3. A sharply worsening economic situation set the stage for the emergence in 1985 of Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931), the most vigorous Soviet leader in a generation and an idealist who wanted to improve conditions for ordinary citizens. 4. Gorbachev believed in communism, but he realized it was failing to keep up with Western capitalism and technology, and that the endless waste and expense of the Cold War arms race had had a disastrous impact on living conditions in the Soviet Union. 5. In order to meet the real needs of the Soviet population, Gorbachev s first reform policies called for economic restructuring, or perestroika, which Gorbachev sought to accomplish through the easing of government price controls on some goods and the setting up of profit-seeking private cooperatives for consumers. 6. After a few initial improvements, however, the economy stalled, and by late 1988 Gorbachev s leadership was threatened by widespread consumer dissatisfaction. 7. Gorbachev s bold and far-reaching campaign of openness, or glasnost, was much more successful and very popular in a country where censorship, dull uniformity, and outright lies had long characterized public discourse. 15

16 8. Democratization, the third element of reform, began as an attack on corruption in the Communist Party and led to the first free elections in the Soviet Union since Millions of Soviets watched the revitalized Congress of People s Deputies for hours on television, taking practical lessons in open discussion, critical thinking, and representative government that led to an active civil society and a new political culture at odds with the Communist Party s monopoly of power. 10. The Soviet leader also brought new political thinking to the field of foreign affairs and acted on it, withdrawing Soviet troops from Afghanistan in February 1989 and seeking to reduce East-West tensions. 11. In December 1987 President Reagan met with Gorbachev at a Washington summit, and the two leaders agreed to eliminate all land-based intermediate-range missiles in Europe, setting the stage for more arms reductions. 12. Gorbachev also encouraged reform movements in Poland and Hungary and pledged to respect the political choices of the peoples of eastern Europe, repudiating the Brezhnev Doctrine. IV. The Revolutions of 1989 A. The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe 1. In 1988, widespread labor unrest and strikes, raging inflation, and the outlawed Solidarity s refusal to cooperate with the military government brought Poland to the brink of economic collapse. 2. In early 1989 Solidarity and Communist leaders worked out an agreement that legalized Solidarity and declared that a large minority of representatives to the Polish parliament would be chosen by free elections that June. 3. Lacking access to the state-run media, Solidarity succeeded nonetheless in mobilizing the country and winning most of the contested seats in an overwhelming victory. 4. A dangerous stalemate quickly developed in the new Polish parliament, but Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, a gifted politician who always repudiated violence, adroitly obtained a majority by securing the allegiance of two minor procommunist parties. 5. In August 1989 the editor of Solidarity s weekly newspaper, Tadeusz Mazowiecki (b. 1927), was sworn in as Poland s new noncommunist leader. 6. In its first year and a half, the Solidarity-led government cautiously introduced political changes, eliminating the secret police, Communist government ministers, and finally Communist party leader Jaruzelski in a step-by-step fashion that avoided confrontation with the Soviet Union. 7. However, in economic affairs, the new government applied 16

17 economic shock therapy, an intense dose of neoliberal policy designed to make a clean break with state planning and move quickly to market mechanisms and private property; thus they abolished many price controls on January 1, 1990, and reformed the monetary system. 8. In the summer of 1989 the Hungarian Communist Party agreed to hold free elections in March 1990; Hungary s Communists enjoyed considerable popular support and believed they could defeat the opposition, but that turned out not to be the case. 9. In an effort to strengthen their support at home and also put pressure on East Germany s hard-line Communist regime, the Hungarians opened their border to East Germans and tore down the barbed-wire iron curtain with Austria. 10. Thus tens of thousands of dissatisfied East German vacationers began pouring into Hungary, crossed into Austria as refugees, and continued on to immediate resettlement in thriving West Germany. 11. In a desperate but ad hoc attempt to stabilize the situation, the East German government opened the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and people danced for joy atop that grim symbol of the prison state. 12. In Czechoslovakia, communism died quickly in November December 1989 in the so-called Velvet Revolution that grew out of popular demonstrations led by students, intellectuals, and a dissident playwright turned moral revolutionary named Václav Havel (b. 1936). 13. The protesters practically took control of the streets and forced the Communists into a power-sharing arrangement, which quickly resulted in the resignation of the Communist government and the election of Havel as president. 14. Faced with mass protests in December 1989, the iron-fisted Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu ( ), alone among eastern European bosses, ordered his ruthless security forces to slaughter thousands, thereby sparking a classic armed uprising. 15. After Ceauşescu s forces were defeated, the tyrant and his wife were captured and executed by a military court, and a coalition government emerged. B. German Unification and the End of the Cold War 1. Taking power in October 1989, East German reform communists, enthusiastically supported by leading East German intellectuals and former dissidents, wanted to preserve socialism by making it genuinely democratic and responsive to the needs of the people. 2. Though they supported closer ties with West Germany, these reformers feared unification and wanted to preserve a distinct East German identity. 3. In the first week after the Berlin Wall was opened, almost 9 17

18 million East Germans roughly one-half of the total population poured across the border into West Germany, where they were welcomed by long-lost friends and loved ones and exhilarated by shopping in the well-stocked stores of the much wealthier West; nearly all returned to their homes in the East, but the experience aroused long-dormant hopes of unity among ordinary citizens. 4. West German chancellor Helmut Kohl skillfully exploited the historic opportunity and presented a ten-point plan for a stepby-step unification in cooperation with both East Germany and the international community. 5. In March 1990 the Alliance for Germany (closely associated with Kohl s West German Christian Democrats) outdistanced the Socialist Party and won almost 50 percent of the votes in an East German parliamentary election, and it quickly negotiated an economic union with West Germany. 6. In July 1990 the crucial international aspect of unification the security of the Soviet Union was successfully resolved when Gorbachev and Kohl signed a historic agreement in which a uniting Germany affirmed its peaceful intentions, pledging not to develop nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. 7. In October 1990 East Germany merged into West Germany, forming henceforth a single nation under the West German laws and constitution. 8. The peaceful reunification of Germany accelerated the pace of agreements to liquidate the Cold War, and in November 1990 delegates from twenty-two European countries, the United States, and the Soviet Union met in Paris and agreed to a scaling down of all their armed forces. 9. The delegates also affirmed that all existing borders in Europe were legal and valid, making the Paris Accord, for all practical purposes, a general peace treaty that brought an end to World War II and the Cold War that followed. 10. Peace in Europe encouraged the United States and the Soviet Union to scrap a significant portion of their nuclear weapons in a series of agreements. C. The Disintegration of the Soviet Union 1. In February 1990, as competing Russian politicians noisily presented their programs and nationalists in the non-russian republics demanded autonomy or independence from the Soviet Union, the Communist Party suffered a stunning defeat in local elections throughout the country. 2. Moreover, in Lithuania the people elected an uncompromising nationalist as president, and the newly chosen parliament declared Lithuania an independent state. 3. Gorbachev responded by placing an economic embargo on Lithuania, but he refused to use the army to crush the separatist government, resulting in a tense political stalemate that 18

19 undermined Gorbachev s popular support. 4. Gorbachev s eroding power and his unwillingness to risk a universal suffrage election for the Soviet presidency strengthened his great rival, Boris Yeltsin ( ). 5. Yeltsin embraced the democratic movement, and after he was elected parliamentary leader of the Russian Soviet Republic in May 1990, he boldly announced that Russia would put its interests first and declare its independence from the Soviet Union. 6. Gorbachev tried to save the Soviet Union with a new treaty linking the member republics in a looser, freely accepted confederation, but six of the fifteen Soviet republics rejected Gorbachev s pleas. 7. In August 1991 a gang of Communist Party hard-liners kidnapped a vacationing Gorbachev and his family in the Caucasus and tried to seize the Soviet government, but the attempted coup collapsed in the face of massive popular resistance. 8. Yeltsin defiantly denounced the rebels from atop a stalled tank in central Moscow and declared the rebirth of Russia, and with the support of the army, Gorbachev was rescued and returned to power as head of the Soviet Union. 9. An anticommunist revolution swept the Russian Federation as Yeltsin and his supporters outlawed the Communist Party and confiscated its property. 10. Yeltsin and his democratic allies declared Russia independent and withdrew from the Soviet Union, as did the other Soviet republics, and the Soviet Union and Gorbachev s job ceased to exist on December 25, The independent republics of the old Soviet Union then established a loose confederation, the Commonwealth of Independent States. 19