Who benefits from anti-Communism?
the Ukrainian satirical weekly "Starchel") Hey guys, we've killed the dragon (from unleashed the struggle against Communism and Communists. This is a special cultural phenomenon: the KSC promoted — and despite its weakness now promotes even more vigorously — a petty bourgeois outlook. All the force of our revolution was thrown against this petty bourgeois mentality. At the same time, however, we took into this as into every other revolution an enraged petty bour-
FOUR MONTHS after the "gentle revolution" of November 1989
Czechoslovakia's triumphant opposition finds itself in an impasse.
All currents united to remove the detested government of Gustav
Husak and Milos Jakes, but removing the bureaucratic regime as a whole is a different matter.
Rumours abound of police involvement in trying to divide up the opposition, and there is great disquiet that the forces of the ancien regime are recycling themselves under new labels. At the same time the new government itself is being accused of reluctance to take steps to clean out the police and army.
In this anxious atmosphere, a petition to outlaw the communist party has been getting some support, diverting popular anger from the real question of replacing the bureaucratic power structure.
Below we publish a comment by Czech revolutionary Marxist Petr
Uhl on this troubled situation.This text first appeared in the independent Czech newspaper Lidové noviny in its issue of March
24, 1990. It has been shortened slightly for space reasons.
DOCUMENT
ISCONTENT with Civic For-
D um (OF) has grown in recent weeks. In the districts and localities, in enterprises and institutions the old bureaucratic mafias are still in control, and in local OFs "shirtchanging" is the rule. Pcople feel that the purge of the armed services is proceeding at a scandalously slow pace. The secret police (StB) has not yet been wholly abolished. The preference of the OF for corridor politics is being more and more noisily criticized, as well as its lack of democracy.
If, however, we agree that the possibility of an armed putsch has been ruled out, we must also agree that careful preparation, forethought and broad-mindedness for the solution of these questions are better for our democracy than speed or longing for revenge, retribution and personal satisfaction.
The collapse of the bureaucratic structures in the first weeks was surprisingly swift. The Charter 77 ethic - its accent on human rights, the offer of a dialogue with the outgoing regime, tolerance and an explicit belief that freedom of speech and assembly applied to everyone ready to respect democratic rules — all this led to round tables at every level, in a peaceful transfer of legislative and executive power. As a result the Communists supported Václav Havel who, as president, is guarantee of existential securitv for ther
International Viewpoint #182 • April 9, 1990 their families. For this reason a and majority of the Communist party's members also felt themselves liberated by the revolution. It opened up for them the perspective of a new life. Many left the and those party who perhaps from a sense of propriety have remained gradually freed themselves from discipline.
its
ХорА,
There the was
ОТОРВАХЕ CE hope that the
ОТ ЛАНЯТА!
majority of them would not vote for the Czechoslovak
Communist Party
(KSC) in the elections.
For some these original civic attitudes were evidently only salami tactics. Now that the state structures and the KSC itself have been broken up and reshaped to such an extent that the old order can clearly not be restored, our "revolutionaries" have geois, full of hatred, longing for revenge and a final solution. A piece of this petty bourgeois lives in everyone, though some of us try to suppress it.
"And how did they behave?" "They were not so kind to us". These expressions send a shiver down the spine above all of those to whom they were really not too kind, or people in positions where they feel some sort of responsibility concerning other people, and who therefore refuse to fire the latter without some concrete evidence that they really did someone some harm. Are we going to repeat the experience of the purges of 1969-70? (I don't want to be misunderstood -there is no reason why StB officers should pick up salaries for not going to work and I do not think that the heads of the regional police departments should keep their jobs. Nor do I believe that local OFs should be run by party functionaries or other mafiosi.)
Elections are coming up. Either we will proclaim the KSC to be a criminal organization and try to condemn or otherwise persecute all its members or we will continue the dialogue with all parts of society, including the Communists and refuse to discriminate against anyone. We
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