REVOLUTIONS OF 1989. HISTORY AND LEGACY Mirjana Maleska, Doctoral School of Political Science, University “Ss Cyril and Methodius”, Skopje Abstract The collective memory or historical narratives, influence attitudes, decisions and approaches to our contemporary problems and are not given once and for all. They are constructions, constantly re-examined, re-built, re-loaded, re-told in the light of new knowledge and insights. That is why debates as this one, are valuable. I did not hesitate what to talk about today: the 1989 revolutions! Out of curiosity, I asked Neda M.Sachmarovska and some of her younger colleagues, what do they remember? The answer made me laugh honestly. They remember something completely different from what I remember. Well, this is a great opportunity for participants from different generations and from different European countries, professors, students and activists to sit down at the same table and discuss the legacy of Europe's past and I am thankful for the invitaton to be here today. Prof. Maleski and Prof. Frchkovski, yesterday, spoke about 1989 and its meaning for the people behind the Iron Curtain. Let me to say few words more, what I remember. 1989 was a year of global and personal dramas. Of euphoric enthusiasm and a lot of pain and tears. A year of revolutions that fundamentaly transformed Europe. A year of hope and great challenges A year of velvet as well as bloody revolutions My generation was not only a witness but also a participant in a series of unique moments of the rise of democracy and I would like briefly to remind you on the chronology of events: 3 February Soviet troop withdrawals from Czechoslovakia begin. 6 February “Solidarity” and the Polish Government start roundtable talks. 18 February The Polish Government declares that Stalin’s repressive machinery – the secret police NKVD – not Nazi Germany, was responsible for 1940 Katyn Forest massacre when nearly 22 000 Polish military officers and intelligensia, were executed 7 April “Solidarity” is legalized, signs agreement on elections in which it can contest 35 percent of seats in Sejm, all in Senat. 15 April-June 4 Students protested on the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, asking for democratic reforms. The Army with tanks, put an end to the protest, killing an estimated 2 600 people 25 April Soviet forces begin leaving Hungary, and multiparty system was introduced in this country. 2 May The Hungarian Government lifts barbed wire, simbolically named, the "iron curtain" along border with Austria. 7 July Gorbachev tells Warsaw Pact leaders they can choose their own road to socialism. 22 August Gorbachev urges Polish communists to join coalition government with “Solidarity”. 24 August The first non-communist government in Eastern Europe since 1948 was elected in Poland. On the election poster is Gary Cooper calling the citizens to vote for “Solidarity” at high noon, association on his famous film High Noon In Russia in August, the first opposition in the Parliament was formed, led by Boris Jelzin and the nuclear physicist, dissident, Nobel laureate, and activist for disarmament, peace and human rights, Andrei Sakharov. In September More than 17,000 East Germans flee to Austria via Czechoslovakia and Poland. 10 September Hungary opens border with Austria, allowing East Germans to flee. 7 October Gorbachev visits East Germany, urges Erich Honecker to adopt reforms. 27 October Warsaw Pact members endorse right of self-determination, renounce Brezhnev doctrine. 9 November Berlin Wall opens. 4 December Warsaw Pact condemns 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. 25 December Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were executed in Romania 29 December Vaclav Havel, writer and dissident becomes the first democratic president of Czechoslovakia. 8 of September 1990 Macedonia declared its independence First competitive elections in the country’s history, were held on 11 November 1990 The reasons for profound and relatively rapid changes in political power and the political system behind the Iron Curtain in 1989, are to be found in the long-standing political, social and economic repression, the political incompetence of the ruling elites and the exhausting struggle for domination between Western and Eastern blocs, that has caused material and spiritual impoverishment in the societies of Central and Easten Europe. Gorbachev, the leader of Soviet Union, understood well the situation and introduced some reforms. That was the beginning of a political “Big-Bang”. The situation ends up with mass revolt of citizens against the governments and its holders. That year I was worked at a scientific institute in Skopje and I remember the atmosphere, which could be described as incredible optimism of that time and hunger for change! Where does this urge come from? Because, we in Yugoslavia, for example, did not live badly, nor was the system as repressive as in other Eastern Bloc countries. We had constitutionally guaranteed social rights self-government and so on. The Yugoslav model of socialism was so flexible that we could buy and read Western literature, travel or work abroad. And yet, we sought and expected the expansion of social rights with political rights and freedoms, such as freedom of opinion and speech, freedom of association in political parties, the right to free and democratic elections, and so on. The debate in university circles in 1989 held between proponents of two opposing views, was around the question: is a stable multi-party democracy possible in Eastern Europe, after the fall of the one-party communist system? Those who believed that Eastern Europe had no preconditions of stable democracy (for ex.professor Ken Jowitt in his article "The new world disorder" published in the “Journal of Democracy”) elaborated on the following arguments: that these countries do not have strong middle class, that the transition from a state to a market economy will be a long and difficult process, that in these societies the middle class is weak, and democratic tradition doesn’t exist. They also pointed out that democracy, as a rule of norms for mediating plural and conflicting interests, if introduced overnight, violently, against the will of some of the actors, would encounter resistance and obstruction from those actors, so that consolidation is questionable. The opposite opinion came, for ex. from the professor Giuseppe di Palma in his text: “Why can democracy succeed in Eastern Europe?” He belonged to a scientific circle that believed that the history of Western democracies could not be strictly copied and transmitted to the former communist countries. Democratic ‘rules of the game’, he writes, can be a matter of agreement while new behavior and political beliefs can develop after political actors have boarded, by their own choice or coercion, into the boat of democracy, meaning free elections and other democtaric institution After thirty years, it is clear that many of these fears and reservations of political scientists and others have proved justified and that the new democracies had and some of them still have even today, difficult time facing nationalism and populism, but in 1989 there was no room for choice: what started as an attempt by the old communist regimes behind the Iron Curtain to make smaller reforms just to prolong their lives, took an unwanted and quite different direction from the first initiatives. Yesterday, we started the debated of the relationship between democratic consolidation of former communist countries, specially Macedonia and lack of long democratic tradition. Let me say that we have some democratic legacy at least of protests, dissidence or subversive artistic expression. For ex. my generation took part in the massive protests of students, workers, intelligentsia etc. against the increasingly violent state repression in Europe and all around the world in 1968. In Czechoslovakia for ex. the communist party leader Dubcek, promoted some democratic reforms known as “Prague Sprin yhat inspired us all in Eastern Europe. In Yugoslavia, on 2–3 June 1968 student demonstrations in Belgrade, were the first mass protest in the country after the Second World War and they sped troughout the contry. I was protesting in Skopje with other students. Did we know what we wanted? Not clearly, we criticized everything but our demands were mainly for better quality of life, better education, political freedoms, freedom of spech etc. I noticed, that the higest officials from the Macedonian communist party present at our meetings, looked at the students’ criticizm approvingly. Later on, I understood why. They belonged to the so called liberals in the party, and they need spport against the dogmatic party wing. As a result, some democratic reforms were introduced and the following year we were leaving our “Yugoslav spring”: freedom of expression in all artistic forms was respected and encouraged. American professor Piter Liotta was so impressed, for example, by Yougoslav rock music that he devoted two articles publihed in the journal I edit, “New Balkan Politics” to this topic . “In the role of "art", he says, the rock 'n' roll expressed the idea of freedom through a loud, pulsating, expressive sound. It was, in fact, a form of liberation.” In this of variety and complexity of life in former communist countries, l would like to mention, an example, the so called subversive art: for example, books like “The Captive Mind” of the writer, poet, academic and Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz, described by historian Norman Davies as a "devastating study" which "totally discredited the cultural and psychological machinery of Communism”. Or ‘subversive’ Polish films and film directors like Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Krzysztof Zanussi, Roman Polanski , described in the article of the film critic Martin Smith in Socialist Review, with the following words: “Polish directors, actors and film crews worked under difficult conditions but amazingly, they were still able to make some of the greatest films of the 20th century” Was the optimism, expectations and hopes from 1989 fullfiled? Obviously, they were put too high. The biggest disappointment was aggressive nationalism and as a result, bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia. International mediation wasn’t efficient or successful and the federation has began to disintegrate through a chaotic process in which federal government in Belgrade lost its role as an impartial center of reconciliation of interests and each national group took security and arms into its own hands. One of the bloodiest territorial and ethnic war in Europe, since World War II, broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina. American journalist David Rohde, in his Pulitzer Prize book End Game, first attracted world’s attention on the massacre in Srebrenica where nearly 8000 Muslim man and boys were killed. That was a terrifying example of ethnic cleansing, led by colonel-general of the Army of Republika Srpska, Ratko Mladic, who recently was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Between seventies and eighties, Praga Spring was crashed by the Soviet tanks. Yugoslav spring was cut, by political means. Tito understood that too much liberalization will endanger his power and he took an offensive battle against liberal fraction in the Yugoslav communist party and won this battle. The leaders of the liberal wing, were expelled from their positions and opportunists and party bureaucrats came to power, once again. Ironically, some years later, in 1989, these same people were put in a situation against their will to write and promote the rules under which the communist party lost its power on the first democratic election in Macedonia in 1990. The new chapter not necessarily easier, has start. LEGACY Speaking about legacy of 1989, I hope, it will be remembered how incredible, unpredictable, exciting, dynamic, widely connected, sometime joyful, much often, painful was the historical and political storm of progress in Europe, after the World War II. During the 1989 revolutions, democracy spread throughout Central and Eastern Europe and Europe united. Some of these changes, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, promised a bright future; some, such as the execution of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania or the break-up of Yugoslavia, the civil war and aggression against Bosnia, savage ethnic cleansing, etc., serve as a reminder that the path to democratic change would not be easy, facing mainly nationalism and populism.