Francois Fejtô
A Curtain of Indifference to Follow the Iron Curtain?
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I do not propose to provide a detailed analysis of the situation in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It suffices to say that albeit there are encouraging signs of the emergence of a spirit of enterprise, of the presence of skilled management and of a relatively well-qualified working class, the situation as a whole is precarious and in a number of countries it verges on catastrophe. There is much that resembles the developing countries, that is what has lately been called the Third World: a widening gap between areas of modernization and of more or less legal getting rich quick, and the pauperization of the majority which is particularly hitting what had lately been the middle classes, and even the upwardly mobile, but also the young and the retired. Around 60 per cent of the population are called on to bear the burden of transition through inflation and unemployment, hitherto unknown, the accumulation of all too visible inequalities, and cut-backs in the social services and culture. The debate between the partisans of shock therapy and those who favoured a steadier pace got under way in the context of the need for further sacrifices. Gradualism was easier to accept for governments anxious to avoid tensions and possible explosions that are always threatening. Poland bravely chose the first option. But whatever is the chosen option, protests against the growing social costs of the transition were unavoidable. This explains the 1994 electoral success, at the expense of the liberals and of the right, of the socialist parties of Lithuania, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, socialist parties that are the offspring of the former communist parties, supported by trade unions which naturally defended—just as in capitalist countries—social entitlements even when these are an obstacle to modernization.
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In fact, and this is how I wish to conclude, the West holds the key to a solution to all the problems of transition. It may shock some, but I have to say that the Great Western Powers, Europe and the United States, bear a serious responsibility, for various reasons, for the dramatic situation in which the ex-satellite countries now find themselves. To start with—to go back no further—they are responsible for confirming at Helsinki the fait accompli which Stalin accomplished with impunity by his arbitrary interpretation of the Yalta agreement as it related to the liberated countries. Secondly, they were responsible for an Ostpolitik of dialogue and credits, aimed at stabilizing a world balance of power, which had as its effect the continued survival of communist regimes which were suffering a crisis of stagnation. Thirdly, for having refused, in 1989-1990, to come to the aid of states ready to become part of the European and Western economic and political system, along the lines of the Marshall Plan. The principles of the latter were perfectly applicable to countries that had suffered incalculable damage due to a domination which had been imposed on them with the assent of the West. There is a moral responsibility for an absence of solidarity and understanding in the face of difficulties with which nations that are so near have to contend, which are nevertheless ready to share the fate of a type of civilization which they had idealized for so long and whose profound crisis they are now weighing up.
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is a noted French journalist and historian of Hungarian birth, a specialist in East-West relations and one-time editor of Preuves. His works include Histoire des democraties populaires (Seuil). The above is an address given at a conference entitled "From perestroika to the search for a new international order", held in Genoa in March 1995. It appeared in Esprit of May 1995.
