Cristian Orgonas. Cati bani producea un muncitor pe vremea lui Ceausescu si cati bani produce acum

© Cristian Orgonas for businessday.ro, 2011.
Economie Publicat la 7.3.2011 6 comentarii
Cati bani producea un muncitor pe vremea lui Ceausescu si cati bani produce acum
Valoarea bunurilor si serviciilor produse de catre un angajat influenteaza in mod decisiv atat competitivitatea economica a unei tari, cat si nivelul salariilor din tara respectiva. La acest capitol, Romania se afla pe penultimul loc in UE, insa progresele pe care le-am facut in ultimii 40 de ani sunt semnificative.
Pentru a vedea cum a evoluat valoarea adaugata/muncitor intre 1970 si 2010 am luat in considerare trei sectoare economice: industria, constructiile si agricultura, click pe graficul alaturat pentru detalii.
I. Cati bani produce un muncitor in industrie
In 1970, valoarea productiei industriale calculata in preturi constante la nivelul anului 2005 era de 37 miliarde lei, iar numarul angajatilor totaliza 2,28 milioane, cifre din care rezulta o valoare a productiei per angajat de 16.291 lei.
In 1989, dupa 20 de ani de dezvoltare multilaterala, valoarea productiei industriale a crescut la 88,4 miliarde lei, iar numarul angajatilor la 4,1 milioane, valoarea/angajat ajungand astfel la 21.502 lei, cu 32% mai mare decat in 1970. Acesta este castigul real inregistrat in acesti 20 de ani.
Daca impartim insa in doua perioada comunista, intre 1970 si 1979, valoarea adaugata/angajat a crescut cu 67%, iar intre 1980 si 1989 a scazut cu 24,5%.
In 2009, valoarea productiei industriale a fost de 81 miliarde lei, insa numarul celor care lucrau in industrie scazuse la ~1,7 milioane, astfel ca valoarea adaugata per angajat a fost de ~47.600 lei, cu 121% mai mare decat cea din 1989. Nu avem inca datele finale pentru 2010, insa anul trecut, productia industriala calculata in preturi constante (2005) s-a situat in jurul valorii de 90 miliarde lei, ceea ce inseamna ca valoarea/angajat a crescut la 53-55.000 lei.
Per total, castigul real de productivitate inregistrat intre 1970 si 2010 in sectorul industrial a fost de aproximativ 230%.
II. Cati bani produce un muncitor in constructii
Forta de munca angajata in constructii in 1970 totaliza 768.000 persoane, iar valoarea adaugata generata de acest sector era de 6,8 miliarde lei (preturi constante 2005), productia/angajat fiind de 8.859 lei. In 1989, productia a ajuns la 15.033 lei/angajat, castigul real de productivitate inregistrand in acesti 20 de ani o crestre de 69,7%. Intre 1970 si 1979, castigul real de productivitate a fost de 60%, iar intre 1980 si 1989 de doar 6,5%.
In 2009, in sectorul constructiilor s-a generat o valoare adaugata totala de 33,9 miliarde lei, cu 192% mai mare decat cea din 1989. In acelasi timp, productia/angajat a ajuns la aproape 50.000 lei, castigul de productivitate in perioada 1989-2009 ajungand la 229%.
Intre 1970 si 2009, castigul real de productivitate in sectorul constructiilor a fost de aproximativ 460%.
III. Cati bani produce un muncitor in agricultura
Populatia ocupata in sectorul agricol a scazut de la 4,87 milioane in 1970, la 3.05 milioane in 1989, in timp ce valoarea adaugata a crescut de la 13,6 miliarde lei, la 21,5 miliarde lei. Prin urmare, productia/persoana ocupata a crescut cu 151,7%, de la 2.797 lei, la 7.041 lei. Din nou insa, exista diferente mari intre anii `70, si anii `80. Astfel, intre 1970 si 1979, valoarea adaugata per capita a crescut cu 116%, iar intre 1980 si 1989 cu doar 4%!!
In 2009, agricultura a produs o valoarea adaugata de 28,5 miliarde lei, productia per capita situandu-se in jurul valorii de 10.000 lei, cu 45% mai mare decat cea din 1989.
Intre 1970 si 2009, castigul real de productivitate in sectorul agricol a fost de 266%.
IV. Valoarea adaugata calculata in dolari la preturi curente
Cifrele de mai sus au fost exprimate in preturi constante – in ce priveste evolutia productivitatii exprimata in dolari la preturi curente, castigurile sunt urmatoare:
- in industrie: 118% intre 1970 si 1989, si 330% intre 1989 si 2010. Intre 1970 si 2010 castigul a fost de ~850%;
- in constructii: 176% intre 1970 si 1989, si 470% intre 1989 si 2010. Intre 1970 si 2010 castigul a fost de 1.450%;
- in agricultura: 530% intre 1970 si 1989, si 58% intre 1989 si 2010. Intre 1970 si 2010 castigul a fost de 890%;
V. La final
Daca vom compara cei 20 de ani comunism cu cei 20 de ani de capitalism vom observa ca, in prima perioada, cresterile de productivitate au fost mai mici, insa s-au realizat in conditiile in care numarul angajatilor a crescut semnificativ, iar in a doua perioada, castigurile au fost mai mari, insa au fost realizate cu pretul reducerii drastice a numarului de angajati. Practic, in 2010, valoarea productiei industriale era aproximativ egala cu cea din 1989, dar numarul angajatilor a scazut cu mai mult de 50%, de unde rezulta o crestere de productivitate de peste 100%.
Cat de sanatoasa este insa aceasta crestere? Desi cresterile de productivitate sunt importante pentru sanatatea unei economii, ideal ar fi ca acestea sa vina pe fondul cresterii, nu reducerii numarului de angajati. Este evident ca Ceausescu a exagerat intr-o anumita directie (sa dam la toti de lucru!), dar solutia nu este sa maximizam productivitatea angajand cat mai putini oameni, ci sa dam de lucru la cat mai multi, pastrand in acelasi timp un ritm bun de crestere al productivitatii.
Sursa datelor: ONU, ILO, INS
Din seria Comunism vs Capitalism citeste si:
1. Produsul Intern Brut: 20 de ani de comunism vs 21 de ani de capitalism
2. Cum s-a schimbat structura economiei romanesti in ultimii 40 de ani

Tags: capitalism, comunism, PIB, productivitate



6 comentarii
    1.    
redraz
7.3.2011, 9:45 am 
parca era vorba ca romanii sunt un popor de lenesi.
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    2.    
Alex
7.3.2011, 9:48 am 
Nu le-ai ajustat cu inflatia.. Cifrele ajustate sunt foarte diferite…
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Cristian Orgonas
7.3.2011, 9:54 am 

Alex: in primul grafic ai cifrele in lei la preturi constante. In al doilea grafic ai cifrele in dolari la preturi curente.
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    3.    
prudent
7.3.2011, 9:52 am 
Khris, e necesar sa repetam (ad nauseam) ca joburi MULTE genereaza numai sectorul de servicii???? in UK sau USA ce % din populatie e ocupata in industrie si agricultura??? pe masura ce avanseaza tehnologia numarul de noi joburi SCADE. Ar fi de asemenea interesant -in dolari contstanti- sa vedem cum a evoluat salariul net in aceeasi perioada.
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Cristian Orgonas
7.3.2011, 9:59 am 

Prudent: eu m-am referit la productivitate si la modul in care a evoluat indicatorul asta in anii 70-80 si 90-2000. Avem nevoie ca de aer de noi locuri de munca, indiferent in ce domenii, dar ar fi preferabil sa ne concentram pe productie.
Despre salarii am sa scriu intr-un alt articol.
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db
7.3.2011, 10:42 am
Un sector de servicii- cu piata de desfacere mondiala- cu cheltuieli mici pe resurse – altele decat forta de munca – sectorul IT&C in special dezvoltarea de software – este de preferat multor altor sectoare industriale. Eu zic sa ne concentram pe el. Ar fi minunat sa ne putem concentra si pe consultanta- e tot din sfera servicii – dar asta e mai greu.
De citit si Numarul patentelor acordate in 2009 – la minimul ultimilor 39 de ani

The Left and Marxism in Eastern Europe: An Interview with Gáspár Miklós Tamás

Vă rog să citiți acest text selectat de mine, în speranța că vă poate interesa. Cu prietenie, Dan Culcer

The Left and Marxism in Eastern Europe:
An Interview with Gáspár Miklós Tamás
Imre Szeman

Gáspár Miklós Tamás (b. 1948) has long been one of the most important political voices in Europe. Trained as a philosopher and author of numerous scholarly books and articles, his is a life that has been intimately bound up with the political history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A prominent dissident in the 1980s and a parliamentarian in the first years of the Hungarian government following the end of Communism, Tamás has moved increasingly to the Left over the past two decades. Throughout his life, he has retained an unrelenting commitment to social and political justice, which he pursues both through his theoretical and political writings (he is a regular contributor to the TLS and to the most important Hungarian dailies) and his direct involvement in political action — a way of living one’s beliefs that should stand as model for the Left today.

Though his work has been translated into numerous languages (including English), his ideas and positions still deserve to be better known in the English-speaking world than they are at present. An interlocutor in recent debates with Slavoj Žižek, and a figure once described as Hungary’s Václáv Havel, it is likely Tamás’s commitment to the politics of a part of the world sometimes off the radar that has made him less of a global public intellectual than one might expect. This interview offers an introduction to and overview of the life of a remarkable thinker and activist; it serves, too, to highlight the ways in which the political and social dramas of a small country like Hungary can offer meaningful and important insights into broader forces shaping the entire globe.

This interview was conducted in February 2010. All explanatory notes are my own.
The Left and Marxism in Eastern Europe: An Interview with Gáspár Miklós Tamás

Can you tell us about your family background and education?

I spent roughly the first half of my life (from 1948 to 1978) in Transylvania, Romania, in the city of Cluj/Kolozsvár. This may be something incomprehensible for your readers; to wit, a life at the back of beyond which was, at the same time, a life intertwined with the grand drama (and the farce) of the twentieth century. In a way, I was fortunate to be the child of a communist couple — my father was a writer and journalist, my mother a hospital nurse, both from the Hungarian minority there (which in my town was a majority at that time), my mother also Jewish — who both spent long years in prison before 1945. They came from the old underground movement, with habits and convictions pretty atypical for their time and place. My father did housework and looked after me, something absolutely unimaginable for the average man of his generation. My mother was seven years older, and there was between them a camaraderie only known to old-style socialists. Conversation was always “on a high level,” something that was not limited to intellectuals. Some of our acquaintances, committed workers of the old school, would not fritter away their time in discussing the weather or football; they would not stoop to anything inferior to world affairs, art, or space travel. I was raised on Goethe, Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, Tolstoy, Maupassant — and Brahms, Schumann, Mahler. Those were their tastes. When I was ill, my father read to me the long nineteenth-century epics of Vörösmarty and Arany.[1] And wonderful Soviet children’s books. In the midst of dictatorship and upheaval and scarcity, we had an almost Victorian childhood. No “youth culture,” no rock music, no travel — just a lot of books and music lessons and walks in the park.

My parents and most of their friends — tied together by their shared memories of oppression and persecution before the war — had been considerably disappointed in their regime by the time I came to think of politics beyond romantic picture books about the October Revolution. As internationalist Bolsheviks and ethnic Hungarians, they were shocked by the unexpected nationalism of the regime: by its mendacity, its economic failure, rule of the secret police, and idiotic censorship, combined with the nauseating sycophancy of the “new culture.” Some of them went to prison again. What is difficult to explain today is that in spite of this they felt part of a huge historical canvas — a history not necessarily with a happy ending — and did not believe that they had to renounce the only cause worth living for: the liberation of humankind.

Even if this latest attempt was obviously a total front, they would read their Brecht and Sartre, follow developments in Guatemala and Indonesia, and try to understand what was going on in the Soviet Union — by the 1960s considered an enemy by the Romanian party leadership seeking independence with a chauvinist and anti-minorities coloring — from books now forgotten, such as Konstantin Paustovsky’s fascinating memoirs.[2]

I may have been a provincial — and I was — but life never felt provincial.

I looked upon my parents with some condescension. Their revolutionary world was imaginary. Their Party inaugurated a system that was repressive, dumb, and boring, past any salvaging; it was scary, but it still could not be taken seriously. Its official art and philosophy were ridiculous with its patriotic phrase-mongering. It was all about stupid old power. But what was not my parents’ and, in general, the old commie intellectuals’ microcosm — with its universalism and its genuine concern with the downtrodden, their puritanism and altruism, and their passion for learning — was just a second-rate petty bourgeois boys’ life of sports, girls, syrupy Italian pop songs (remember Domenico Modugno and Adriano Celentano?) and pointless small talk, laughing at the expense of our classmates who happened to be fat or who had a slight speech impediment.

School was nothing. Education was at home, at the theater, at the concert hall, at the violin and piano lessons, and then at the public library. I could talk properly only to old — well, much younger than I am now but they seemed to be, and behaved as, old — men and women, who gave me Wages, Price and Profit or Goethe’s Italian travels and Dickens and Gottfried Keller and Stendhal for my birthday. I listened to radio plays on the wireless. It was the great season for Hörspiele [radio plays], and we could receive by then Radio Budapest, which was not only the center of our national culture but also, somehow, “the West.”

Then I went to university, studied classics and philosophy, married very early, got into political trouble before graduating, became assistant editor at a Hungarian-language literary weekly, published philosophical and literary essays, was subjected to protracted harassment by the secret police, was fired and blacklisted from publishing — but my Descartes book [Descartes a módszerről, 1977] came out somehow all the same — and finally was forced out of Romania. I did not want to go to the West, although it would have been easier than Hungary, where my bad reputation preceded me. I was a Hungarian writer and they still had to throw me out of Eastern Europe. “They” still want to, but I don’t think they will finally succeed. But “they” now are coming closer to that than the combined regimes of Ceauşescu and Kádár ever did. In a few years, I had become an embittered enemy of a system which did not appear to have one single redeeming feature.

It was wonderful to be rid of that hellhole, Transylvania. But it is of course my Heimat, and in spite of having been persecuted as an ethnic Hungarian, I feel complete solidarity with Romania, a country tortured and humiliated. Ethnic nationalism — at least regarding Hungarians — has since abated, and I have new fraternal relationships with Romanians. I feel at home there again. I even modestly participate in developments there, and this is a source of great happiness.

What was your experience of intellectual and political life under the regime of János Kádár (leader of Hungary from 1956 to 1988)?

My experiences were bound to be atypical. First, I was a Hungarian émigré (and immigrant, a politically-exiled person) in Hungary, surely something anomalous. At the moment I arrived in Budapest, I joined the “democratic opposition,” the loose dissident network. I already knew its leading lights from previous visits and was always considered their Transylvanian ally. I had to be careful at the beginning until I received my papers, my citizenship, my work permit, and so on, so at first I published in samizdat only pseudonymously, but I came out into the open after the Jaruzelski coup in Poland (December 13, 1981) and was accordingly fired from the philosophy department of Budapest University [Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem].

But of course the specific preoccupations of the system’s adversaries should not be generalized. The mainstream culture of these years was a blend of extreme, indeed quite outlandish skepticism, and an efflorescence of creative energy. It was also very conservative politically. All elements of a traditional leftist cast of mind had vanished. The reaction to the ongoing crisis of the regime was not directed against its decadence but against its distant revolutionary origins. A massive hostility against the features of a socialist cultural “hegemony” — commitment, altruism, solidarity with the oppressed, the primacy of the Idea — had been analyzed as parts of the doctrinaire, “totalitarian” mindset, fanaticism, and dogmatism, so much so that the most admired critic of the time told me he hated Fidelio as it was “a bloody Bolshevik opera.” The best-loved thinkers of this era were Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Max Weber. When I was still teaching, I taught German romantic philosophy from [Johann Georg] Hamann to Schelling, including Franz von Baader and Novalis. The “communist” party had abandoned “ideology” in favor of “professionalism,” pragmatism, and technocratic verbiage, as it did not need and did not want mobilization.

It must be understood — as I have shown in my essay, “Marx on 1989” (forthcoming in Angelaki) — that the Party (the one party with a capital P) in all Soviet-style societies was organized (and this was its hidden, inner principle) not territorially, but in the workplace, thus dissolving the classic social democratic dichotomy between trade unions and the political party, which is, of course, the secret of “reformism”: the inability of social democracy to address power. The Party was present at the point of production (just as its main revolutionary rival, the workers’ councils), unlike bourgeois electoral parties based in constituencies (ridings, electoral districts) that comprise people’s homes — that is, parties which appeal to their supporters and voters as consumers, home-dwellers, and opinion-holders, i.e., private citizens. Although the Party had long given up on socialism, its “deep structure” remained revolutionary since it was still intimately linked to the working class and sustained an egalitarian drive. The party cells in factories were foci of power, social services, education, and militant mobilization: they fought for influence with the technical management. Party secretaries of the large enterprises were the backbone of the regime; higher education, hiring, and promotion quotas favored persons of working-class origin. Patronage exercised by workplace organizations assured for a while a countervailing force, an ever-recurrent trend of strong upward mobility for sectors of the industrial proletariat, against the increasing inequalities of a state capitalist system (a class society, after all) with its inherent hierarchies and undeniable exploitation, oppression, and cultural rigidity. This countervailing force necessitated permanent mobilization, which, in the absence of genuine socialist goals, had to be moral. Well, it was precisely this which had been dispensed with in the 1970s. With the silencing and expulsion of the Lukács School, who engaged in the creation of an East European New Left in 1973 — and the nearly concomitant decomposition of the Praxis group in Yugoslavia — the last remnants of Marxist research, critique, and debate had been annihilated.[3]

Instead of mobilization, the Party sought neutralization, and it had begun to define “success” exactly like its Western counterpart, the welfare state: the rise of real wages, economic growth, and the expansion of consumption and consumer choice, leisure, entertainment, and the rest. In this, it offered competition (instead of an alternative) to the West, and lost. It was the Party itself that identified terror campaigns with revolutionary fervor. Since it had identified Stalinism with revolution, de-Stalinization meant inner peace, lack of any ideology and, naturally, market reforms.

But there were quite a number of Hungarian peculiarities. First, the memory of 1956 (centered on the idea of national independence and a competitive electoral democracy) and the quite exceptional magnitude of the Shoah on Hungarian soil had made the Hungarian Party leadership, like its East German counterpart, extremely cautious in the replacement of Marxism-Leninism with nationalism. The savage nationalism known in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Albania, Russia, China, and Vietnam in the period — which gave each its oppressive edge — was largely absent in Hungary, so there was no official culture with its scary and tedious rituals, which meant fewer taboos, less censorship, more openness, and more fun. Together with higher living standards, the absence of ideological coercion, and a certain undemanding, sly hedonism, Hungary became the envy of the Eastern Bloc. People could travel (I couldn’t because I was a dissident, but in the neighboring countries only dissidents traveled — with a one-way ticket to Western exile) and the press was informative and lively (by that time pretty pro-capitalist, extolling discretely the attractions of the West; the media hero was certainly not Brezhnev or Andropov, but first Willy Brandt, and then Mrs. Thatcher).

It was the Party’s pride that we had excellent literature, a varied and lively arts scene, and high-quality social sciences. Aestheticism filled the gaping hole where revolutionary dogma lay buried. It was all very nice, but desperately empty. The expression “reforms” had already in 1970s started to mean what it does today: market reforms, anti-egalitarian measures, and a reduction of state interference, redistribution, and planning. That, in contrast to Stalinism (terror and the pains of any accumulation, period), appeared progressive, modern, and liberating. Socialism meant the grey, terrifying, repressive past, robbing it from its traditional advantage: the representation of Newness. A true end to hierarchy — that is, the end to all organized society, to all civilization as we knew it — was the great temptation, the great diabolical hope of communism, a future without coerced labor. If communism is not future in some sense, then it is nothing. And this is precisely what it had become in the 1970s and 1980s: nothing.

The Party had merrily acquiesced in this. Its leaders thought they had fulfilled their “progressive” obligations if most people were relatively and comparatively well-fed and if they were on the whole satisfied with television programming. But it was not only they who were annoyed by dissident criticism of the inequalities and human rights violations of their system. Dissidents reproached them for censorship, for the lack of a critical Öffentlichkeit [public sphere], for stultifying conformism, and for the lack of genuine and free political self-organization. The Party could recognize the leftish bent of dissident criticism and hated in it the “contestation,” the inherent questioning of the legitimacy of their rule on grounds uncomfortably familiar. We dissidents annoyed the hell out of the quite apolitically conservative beneficiaries of our modest consumerism and pragmatism, who identified social criticism as “leftist,” hence “communist,” hence virtually and potentially “Stalinist” or “totalitarian.” Like conservatives always and everywhere, they hated philosophy or theory of any sort. Good conservatives always prefer doxa to episteme, which is why all good philosophy is subversive. Dissidents were vaguely on the left … but they had no power! But what could be the sense of being on the left in these circumstances? The professed aims of the Left could not be taken seriously by adult people who saw “socialism” as an effective trick in getting a lot of power and effectively legitimizing the sacrifices needed for modernization and rapid development.

The lack of cynicism in dissidents, philosophers, sociologists, avant-garde artists, activists, troublemakers, hell-raisers, and whistle-blowers — the deadly earnestness my present readers confront in any Marxist or anarchist meeting in a basement near you — has made us extremely unpopular in middle-class and intellectual milieu desirous of something lighter, more ironical, more melancholic, and more pleasant. Light-hearted sexual license, perfectly compatible with patriarchy and nihilism, is not identical with the serious and high ideal of “free love” between equals, with its necessarily complex rules of engagement; behavior preempting a future emancipation in a still-repressive society can be exploitative. All radicals know how sexual and other emotional predators can exploit the inherent egalitarianism and trusting openness of the milieu. In our case, it was not only emotional parasites of many genders, but also secret agents, délateurs et mouchards (“denouncers” and “spies” is too weak: polite English, unlike working-class slang, does not have an authentic police-state vocabulary, you lucky stiffs).

The Party’s policy of demobilization was quite successful. As long as the living standards were improving, the populace was quiescent. However, the center of politics shifted from the Party organizations to the network of reformist technocrats in the Finance Ministry, the National Planning Authority, the National Bank, the appointed reform quangos [quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations], and the various social-science projects under the aegis of the Academy of Sciences. Through the enforcement of loud manifestations of political loyalty and verbal revolutionary fervor the mainstream was characterized by apolitical, technocratic talk. The regime was more and more dependent on Western loans, and therefore had to make concessions to Western political sensibilities and tastes: it had to go soft on repression, especially on the routine persecution of intellectuals. Not only dissidents, but old-fashioned Marxist-Leninists were reprimanded, downgraded, pensioned off, or fired. The regime wanted to get rid of all manner of politics. After the first wave of pay cuts, the working class started fermenting, so the cautious leadership — unlike in other “real socialist” countries — slowed austerity policies through the accumulation of new debt and the brutal reduction of new investments. The Party feared the proletariat and did not want committed socialist intellectuals who might join in eventual protests.

Thus, it had gradually lost everything from its “workerist” legacy and plebeian identity. Little wonder, then, that nobody had lifted a little finger in the defense of “real socialism.” In its effort to satisfy and pacify everybody and reach consensus through enforced and generalized conformism, the successor regime to the October Revolution ceased to represent anybody except the narrow interests and the self-preservation instinct of its bureaucratic-technocratic elites. Its main weapon, the security apparatus, failed to organize — or even to contemplate — resistance to the impending liberal turn; like the leadership itself, it focused only its leading members’ survival and on accommodation with the new dispensation. This is not to say that the Party and the security apparatuses had forgotten or completely relinquished their authoritarian habits and routines, and did not try to control the transition; but on the whole, they did not succeed.

A great deal has been made of the presence of former Party figures at all echelons of the new institutions. Their presence is a fact. But it would be asinine to think that a wholly different system, a wholly different system of governance, has nothing new because some commanding posts are still manned by formerly powerful persons. Anyway, the great winner — in terms of profit — is not the “nomenklatura bourgeoisie,” although most of them are quite wealthy either as highly placed civil servants, or as business people, or as mafiosi, but the transnational corporations and the power networks that can be loosely called “Western.” These corporations were not interested in the re-launch of obsolete rust-belt industries; they have bought state-owned firms for a song, closed them down, and inundated domestic consumer markets with junk from their old suppliers. Where would people fired from their old workplaces find the money to make these consumer markets lucrative? This is not a question contemporary capitalists ask themselves.

The worldwide disintegration of labor had taken the form of political transition in Eastern Europe. It was the irrefutable end of the proletariat as a political subject, even mythologically, and it was the end of its — surely fraudulent and vacuous — representation. Its end was soon followed by that of its historical rival: social democracy in the Western liberal states. The rise of China has shown that this representation can be continued, and that the name of this continuation is capitalism.

Can you remind us about the events of 1988-89 as they unfolded? Westerners will have some idea about the role played in the collapse of Communism by (for example) the lifting of travel restrictions by the Hungarian government in January 1988. They are far less likely to have a sense of the significance of the activities of opposition movements whose activities precipitated the resignation of Kádár in May 1988, the reburial of Imre Nagy in Heroes’ Square, and so on. As you’ve pointed out in your own writing, the West now takes credit for a political change that couldn’t possibly have come about without significant internal opposition. What imperatives drove this opposition? And what expectations did it have for the future of Hungary?

The “events” as you are calling them by an appositely neutral term, were, however illusory, momentous and quite wonderful. Illusory, as they were grounded on totally unanalyzed and unreflective notions such as “democracy,” by which most people understood political pluralism, basic rights and liberties, and an end to Soviet occupation. They have also involved what we could a little grandiloquently call “the politics of truth,” which is more than the suppression of censorship: it was a call for a merciless exposition of the hidden history of crimes committed by the dictatorship. The effective result of this varies from country to country. Hungary is perhaps the worst culprit. Here not even the secret service files had been made accessible to the public and to research. Parliament has been tergiversating for twenty years now, and the public is apathetic, believing — perhaps rightly — that after two decades of special services treatment the documents will be partial, truncated, maybe even forged.

As to our role in the changes: it was of course not the merit of dissidents that things had changed, but it was certainly our merit that we persisted and were there when the events started happening owing to various circumstances.

The chief honor pertains, of course, to the Polish workers. Even they, after uncovering the astonishing fact that unlike 1953, 1956, 1968, the Soviet Union was not any longer willing to intervene on behalf of its satellite regimes and that the Party did not resist, were surprised that the system (in this case, the simplified French term, le pouvoir, makes perfect sense) had to save itself through a recourse to the army, something fundamentally contrary to the essence of a Leninist system. However, even the Polish workers’ movement was quite exhausted by 1989; the Round table talks were felt by many as sign of a defeat.[4] The program of Solidarność had changed 180 degrees. An orthodox blend of workers’ councils, self-management (the slogan was a Self-Managing Workers’ Republic), and a robust view of equality were turned into a characteristic neoconservative creed. David Ost has shown how belief in Western-style modernity motivated Polish workers’ resistance leaders not only to accept, but to promote policies detrimental to themselves, destroying thereby their own movement.[5] In a few years, Polish workers would vote for former “communist” apparatchiki, who later were to be wiped out of Parliament not so much for their neoconservative policies, but for their mind-boggling corruption.

In East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and a few other places, there was genuine elation, caused partly by the incredible ease with which the much-feared dictatorial powers crumbled. I, for one, was happy. I was not a real leader of the movement, but I certainly was its main orator. From 1988 to 1991, I must have given about two hundred speeches. One did not sleep, and one didn’t, ever, shut up. It was a rush of liberty and — as always when people are given to understand that they matter — there was an outbreak of collective imagination, intelligence, and inspiration. It was as though we were all speaking in tongues: I remember staying up late in a God-forsaken, poor, and cold Hungarian village discussing Tocqueville, Lord Acton, John Stuart Mill, comparing the U.S. Supreme Court to the German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. The very same people are now probably watching tabloid television and talking about soccer. It is a pity — a thousand pities. One could see what people — given motivation and hope — are capable of. This is perhaps the most lasting legacy of 1989: the experience of real masses of people involved in political thinking, from close reasoning to flamboyant passion and, surprisingly, fueled by an unquenchable thirst for facts. Who are we, and what is the point of our existence? This is what nations are thinking about during revolutions. Apart, that is, from falling in and out of love with an astonishing speed. I was faithful to somebody at the time, but I was painfully aware of what was going on around me. Joy.

It is quite terrible to contemplate that all this is lost; even the memory of it is barely shimmering.

The reburial of Imre Nagy is remembered, of course; it is TV footage often repeated. But Imre Nagy and his comrades are not liked at all: they had been Muscovite commies, after all, martyrs or not. At the same time, the traitor and hangman, János Kádár, is considered to have been the greatest Hungarian statesman of the modern age, by people on the Right as well as the Left. In a way, they’re right. Kádár was a conservative and nothing else, with a lot of blood on his safe pair of hands; his counter-revolutionary political character is a perfect match for contemporary attitudes. Philistine, safe, authoritarian, caring only about living standards and public order, he is our ideal now. By the time the Committee for Historical Justice had organized Nagy’s reburial, horse-trading was taking the place of genuine popular action. I vastly preferred the same day a year earlier, in 1988, when we were beaten up and arrested by police for remembering on 16 June the thirtieth anniversary of Nagy’s and his comrades’ execution.

Can you tell us about Beszélő and the Social Contract program?

I was not an editor of Beszélő, only a frequent writer for it, nor an author of the Social Contract program; moreover, I have criticized the latter in another samizdat publication. It seemed to me insufficiently radical at the time and, especially, it gave very little room to people’s spontaneous activity. It was also embarrassingly close at times to the discourse of the Party reformers. All this is insignificant now. The differences between the dominant current within dissidence, “radical reformism,” and the others, pale now in significance.

Obviously, dissidence as such was on the whole to the left of its successor organization, the Free Democratic Alliance, that has since lurched towards neoconservative economic policies — urged by many people, including myself then — while remaining radically liberal in trying to preserve its formerly quite radical human rights and civil liberties agenda. But this, as it turned out, did not include trade union rights.

Could you give us an overview of your involvement in Alliance of Free Democrats (Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége — or SZDSZ)? What were the political commitments of the party? How did these change in the decade following 1989? What caused you to leave the party in 2001?

My own role was that of an orator, public speaker, and an effective writer for the cause rather than proper leadership work as it was perceived then. Looking back, it appears that my revolutionary temperament was more important than any doctrinaire position I may have embraced at the time. Whatever I might have wanted to do, one was confined to the life-and-death struggle against extreme nationalism and growing racism. The right-wing government of the period had supplied (illegally and secretly) the nascent Croatian separatist armed forces with Kalashnikovs. I spoke against that in Parliament, and I was declared, of course, to be a traitor to the nation. The definition of a good patriot, then, ought to have been to be an anti-Serb chauvinist.

In 1994, I did not stand for Parliament again, resigned my responsibilities in the party as well, went to teach and to do research to the U.S. and Western Europe again (Chicago, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Dickinson College, Georgetown, Yale, New School), and started to reconsider my positions. It was not only the abysmal economic and social failure of the East European “regime change” that made me change my mind after having changed the regime, but philosophical difficulties I always had with liberalism. What Habermas calls, following Böckenförde, a problem of the pre-political foundations of a liberal state, gave me a lot of headache. The problem can be solved in the manner of Leo Strauss — a thinker I still admire enormously — in the traditional (albeit radically modernized) theological way only, thereby restricting or annihilating the Enlightenment aspects I was not politically willing to do. You can see that any honest conservative re-foundation of “democratic” society, as in the case of Simone Weil’s London writings (in fact, her testament) will have to ban pluralism and the autonomy of the subject; it would lead to the self-annihilation of the Western liberal state (Simone Weil proposed that after the war, the multi-party system should not be restored and a truth censorship imposed on the media) in spite of both thinkers’ deep commitment against fascism and national socialism. There was no way out towards the Right. In my life, too, the moment had arrived to turn to Marx.

And let it be said quite clearly: I am blaming myself and my friends for having helped to introduce an inhuman, unjust, unfair, inefficient, anti-egalitarian, fraudulent, and hypocritical system that is in no way at all superior to its predecessor, which was awful enough. We’ve been criminally blind and thought, immaturely and selfishly, like many generations of victors before us, that our political success and fame meant a better deal for all. Ridiculous.

What has happened to the SZDSZ in recent years? At present it is a very weak third party after the MSZP (Hungarian Socialist Party, Magyar Szocialista Párt) and the Fidesz-KDNP Coalition (Alliance of Young Democrats / Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége— Christian Democratic People’s Party / Kereszténydemokrata Néppárt), with only eighteen seats (out of a total of 386) in Parliament. Is it a spent force politically?

It is. It did not make it to the European Parliament in June 2009 and it has practically ceased to exist. It’s an ugly end — corruption scandals and the like. Liberal anti-communism is meaningless. The majority of a “natural” liberal basis (young professionals, civil servants, intellectuals, etc.) is now clustering around the extreme right.

Can you give me some sense of the current state of Hungarian politics? To an outsider, it is an incredibly confusing political landscape: the MSZP (the former Communists, one has to remember) have pushed a ferociously neoliberal agenda, which in turn has led the right-wing opposition to take up defense of some social programs that the government has attacked, less out of ideological conviction than political opportunism. The typical valences by which we make sense of political systems seem to be deranged — unless, of course, one places virtually all of the current parties in the government on the right-hand side of the spectrum.
But I sense that things are even worse than the total absence of a Left might suggest. The dominant attitude of the public in Hungary today seems to be that the entire political system is illegitimate and irredeemably so. Former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány’s (2004-2009) reign was characterized by a series of shocking scandals, including the release in September 2006 of an audio recording from a closed-door meeting in which he is heard admitting that “we have obviously been lying for the last one and a half to two years”; his resignation on March 28, 2009 in response to the collapse of the Hungarian economy — a flight from political responsibility under the guise of taking the blame for the situation — has hurt more than helped. Is there any faith left at all in politics in Hungary?

No, no such faith is available, but there was not much of it to begin with. The public is bitter, disappointed, and angry. There is fundamental doubt concerning institutions. The Web — this fertile ground for urban legends, superstition, hate propaganda, and sheer lunacy — has almost completely supplanted traditional media, which were in decline anyway, and a both cynical and hysterical unreason reigns supreme. This is not unique to Hungary, as you know.

What forces have shaped and defined social, cultural, and political life in Hungary since 1989? You wrote in Magyar Hírlap in 2006 that “Hungary’s new civic society despises civic democracy.” What did you mean by that?

Well, this is an instructive case of the semantic, symbolic, and political differences between the Anglophone world and the rest. You can also translate this sentence as “Hungary’s new bourgeois society [bürgerliche Gesellschaft] despises bourgeois democracy [bürgerliche Demokratie].” And this, again, is not exclusively Hungarian: it is valid to the entire ex-Soviet world from Berlin to Vladivostok. First, East Europeans have no respect and no understanding for a bourgeois, liberal, Enlightenment past that was never entirely theirs. Bourgeois modernity was foreign. It came mostly from the Judeo-German, closed towns. It was defended by imperial and royal absolutism, not by popular movements. Then, modernity was imposed from above by communists kept in power by the new imperial masters, the Soviet Union. And last, it was 1989, which, instead of a new kind of “good society,” proposed the “inevitable”: cuts, cuts, and more cuts. This was the radiant future we promised.

Second, we have compromised the idea of freedom for a lifetime by calling an end to egalitarian state redistribution to be tantamount to liberty. It seemed that oligarchic rule, fake electoralism, a yellow press, a precipitous decline in culture and education, a revival of authoritarianism and racism/ethnicism, misogyny, and homophobia were lesser evils — like the Stalinists used to say, “transitory phenomena” to be cured by “market spontaneity” and the creativity of capital. The myth of “civil society” can be very pernicious as it presupposes a society based on voluntary acts of contractual equity, forgetting that the main example of this is the labor contract. The hidden hypothesis here is that labor is contractual like any other act of exchange; hence exploitation is an expression of freedom.

Who can badmouth East Europeans, new to market capitalism of the last variety, if they do not believe in all this nonsense? Why should they?

What forms of alternative politics or social movements exist in Hungary at the present time? In 2007, a colleague and I conducted a series of interviews with university students in Budapest that probed in part their view of political possibilities in the present and in the future. All expressed extreme cynicism about politics; all seemed resigned to life under neoliberalism, especially in a small state like Hungary, which (they felt) had little economic and political autonomy; and none had any sense of the activities or even existence of alternative political movements. Are these students blind to new political developments or is there currently a political vacuum on the left?

This is indeed so. But this does not mean that we should allow this situation to persist. There are promising beginnings of a New New Left in Eastern Europe, at least intellectually; Hungary is a temporary exception. But it is coming here, too.

One of the exciting developments of recent years has been the creation of the Green Left (Zöld Baloldal) in Hungary. You were leading the list of candidates for this party in the June 2009 European Parliamentary elections. Can you talk about your shift from the SZDSZ to the Green Left? And what are your hopes for the party?

Since you’ve asked this question, a court decision has prevented us from standing in spite of initial media successes and good reactions to our initiative. The appeals are running in the courts, but the European elections are over. The party will try to participate in the national elections in April 2010, but I won’t be a candidate this time.

This group is a coalition of various left groupuscules, including unreconstructed old-style communists, Greens, some people from the minuscule far left, social democrats, sections of the anti-globalization movement (also very small), pacifists, feminists — the usual suspects. We have no money and help from abroad is forbidden, although we have the moral support of the European Left Party, led by Die Linke in Germany and the Parti Communiste Français (though the latter are not exactly my favorites). I am not sure we’ll be able to stand. The conditions are forbidding: we need to gather tens of thousands of supporting signatures in an atmosphere of generalized fear. Also, I have doubts about some components of the movement. I accept being the public face of these groups, and I am formally the chairman of its advisory committee, but there is no great activity to see.

Last summer was exhilarating. We gave a sign that the Left is here and won’t go away just like that, so we weren’t wasting our time. This national election will result in a triumph of the nationalist Right, including the fascists — the “Jobbik” party, meaning loosely “the better part,”[6] openly siding with paramilitary and sometimes with terrorist organizations, allegedly engaging in racial killings of Roma and attempts on the life of socialist and liberal politicians. The charges are now being investigated by the public prosecutor; the main suspect now in preliminary custody will be an “independent” candidate supported by this party.

You now describe yourself as a Marxist, with plans for a Marxist theory group in Hungary in addition to your ongoing work as a writer and political commentator from the Left. Why Marx now? In Central and Eastern Europe after 1989, Marxist ideas and theories were hard-pressed to survive their connection to state socialism and the elimination of courses in Marxist-Leninism in universities. Even though the economic collapse has discredited neoliberal ideology — at least its most extreme variants — Marxism in the region is still linked with totalitarianism.
Indeed, as you know, there are ongoing attempts to formalize the connection between communism and fascism as little more than variations on the same totalitarian theme. Budapest’s Terror House Museum makes no distinction between Bela Kun’s 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic, Admiral Horthy’s regency, fascism, and post-War communism — it’s all just “terror” by comparison to liberal capitalism. The “Prague Declaration” announced by the Czech Senate in June 2008 calls for the European Parliament to recognize communism and Nazism as aspects of Europe’s totalitarian legacy. In Hungary, the Supreme Court has recently rescinded the sentence of one of the police officers who shot and killed communist and anti-fascist Endre Ságvári in 1944 — a purely symbolic move whose implications for the Left are chilling.
What work do you hope that Marx and Marxism can do in this context?

To all this we may add that the Romanian Parliament has promulgated a solemn statement, based on a report by a committee appointed by the Romanian president, chaired by Vladimir Tismăneanu, professor of government at the University of Maryland, which states that communism is a crime against humanity or some such thing. (Professor Tismăneanu — witness his articles and interviews in the Romanian press — believes that people such as Slavoj Žižek or myself are a major danger to human freedom.) Similar decisions by the Polish Supreme Court are forthcoming. In Hungary, the hammer and sickle, the red star, the swastika, and the arrow-cross (the coat-of-arms of the Hungarian Nazis) are all banned as “totalitarian symbols.” The European Court of Human Rights has exempted the red star and the hammer and sickle from the Hungarian ban, but the Hungarian state refused to comply.

Still, after all this, when a few of us have announced our allegiance — which, of course, includes a repudiation of “real socialism” of all stripes — our audiences weren’t on the whole upset, but rather incredulous! Not so much for the apparent reason of the folly of joining the defeated (I, for one, feel defeated in my former avatar of an Old Whig, but certainly not as a revolutionary socialist) or of confessing to a belief compromised by the terrible things done in its name, but for the mere implausibility of having social and political principles of any kind at all! Most people don’t regard Marxism as criminal, but as naïve. But this is people’s opinion of liberalism or Christianity as well. Any view seemingly contradicting individual or collective selfishness or self-regard seems incredible. As I personally cannot be accused of any collusion with the former regime (except, rarely and absurdly, by very young Nazi slanderers who cannot spell “Capital”) and as I have no reason for apologia in this respect, critics are content to call me out of date, as they fail to follow intellectual fashions that have reverted to the pre-1989 normality in the West: radical chic is on the left again. All this does not prevent the radical right to bay for my blood, but they have been doing this since I was a rather conservative liberal. This has nothing to do with my substantive view; nobody who is not an ethnicist can be exempt. It is even a smidgen nicer to be a Marxist than a liberal: at least I am not considered to be sold out to foreign capital, although I can still be slandered as being soft on Jews.

Which traditions of Marxism are you drawing on? Are there any contemporary writers or theories which you find especially useful, compelling, or relevant?

Several. Even when I was ideologically very remote from Marxism, I did not stop reading some of its literature. I was quite influenced by the early and middle work of Cornelius Castoriadis — I also knew him, an astonishing man — and Karl Korsch. Although I was personally close at one time to many people from the Lukács School, it is only now that I have read him with sustained attention. (His pupils have gone in the opposite direction, e.g., my erstwhile friend Agnes Heller has become a conservative with an increasingly strong Judaic interest, and a cold warrior après coup, who is bizarrely accusing her old friend and colleague, István Mészáros, author of Beyond Capital and guru to Hugo Chávez, of having been expelled from Canada as a Soviet agent — Mészáros is an 1956 political émigré, an emeritus professor at Sussex University with impeccable anti-Stalinist credentials.) I am an avid reader of operaismo and of pre-Empire Negri, and also at the opposite end, the Wertkritik school, in my view the best heirs to Critical Theory (Hans-Georg Backhaus, Helmut Reichelt, Michael Heinrich, but also the unruly genius, Robert Kurz, and the “cult” periodicals of this tendency, Krisis, Streifzüge, Exit!) as well as authors like Robert Brenner, Ellen Meiksins Wood, David Harvey, Michael Lebowitz, and various Marxists working in England too numerous to mention. The greatest impact came, however, from Moishe Postone’s magnum opus. These choices may seem eclectic, but I don't belong to any of these currents. I am working on my own stuff and I am learning from all of them.

Your writing over the past decade has perceptively examined the rise of right-wing populism in Eastern Europe and Hungary. This is a development that has been relatively under-reported in the West; it has taken Berlusconi’s anti-Roma policies to raise greater awareness about the rise in violence towards Roma throughout Europe and in the post-Soviet region in particular. The most obvious form of right-wing populism lies in the revival of xenophobia and ultranationalism in the region (for instance, it is now common to see t-shirts and bumper stickers with maps of Hungary prior to the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, even around Budapest). But you’ve pointed to other, somewhat subtler forms, too: Gyurcsány’s proposal in 2008 for a “work test” for the unemployed, which was intended to establish who is competent to work, and which is just the tip of the iceberg of an ongoing withdrawal of the rights of citizenships and the rise of fascism in the region.
What accounts for this right-wing populism? In what ways do the failed promise of post-Soviet democratic renewal and the twenty-year drama of neoliberal economics contribute to its rise? (That is: in what important ways is this populism different than early forms in the region?) How and where do you see it expressing itself? What needs to be done to arrest it?

What you call right-wing populism, I think, erroneously, I call post-fascism (see my “On Post-Fascism” in Boston Review, Summer 2000). There are, of course, important differences between post-fascism and “classical” national socialism — the former is not militaristic, it is not “totalitarian,” and so on — but the parallels are striking, too. That the enemy is both bourgeois liberalism and Marxism (which for the far Right means all varieties of the Left, from social democrats to anarcho-syndicalists, a usage inherited by the North American mainstream press which is in the habit of calling “Marxist” any peasant Jacquerie in the Himalayas if they’re hoisting a red flag) is certainly telling, i.e., they are still romantically (and insincerely) opposed to all forms of modernity and are daydreaming about caste society, sacred kingdoms, the superiority of the warrior to “his” woman, racial purity, the cleansing properties of mother earth, and the like. As I am writing these responses, the phone rang, and a friend reported that posters with the likeness of Socialist Party candidates have been decorated with Stars of David of the prescribed (by the Gestapo) “canary yellow” hue, but then my own posters were so decorated in 1990 — I was elected, however. This time, the affair is much more serious. The common element between “communism” and “liberalism” is the fantasy figure of the Jew (the candidates in question are reliable Gentiles) embodying mediation and universalism. Jews as physical persons are less threatened, though, than the Roma who are victims of racial killings and open discriminatory practices everywhere in Europe. (Also the Canadian government is restricting travel — demanding visas — from countries that the Roma are trying to flee.)

The reasons for this are crystal clear.

With the development of technology and the participation of the new industrial powers (China, India, and Brazil) in the international division of labor, with the increasing intensity and speed of work, with the lengthening of labor time in the global rust belt, the workforce is everywhere becoming “precarious” and unemployment is a universal fact of life for huge masses of people. Concomitantly, improving health stretches life expectancy to unprecedented heights. Health insurance, social services, and central state redistribution of resources are becoming ever more important, frequently the only reasonable source of livelihood for entire regions, social strata, and various populations and generations. There is a grim competition for state resources.

Mainly, the competing groups are the struggling and endangered middle class and the poorest underclass or, in global terms, the crisis-ridden North and the famished South. No capitalist state can afford to satisfy both. In keeping with the fundamental character of liberal societies, the transformation of Western liberal societies into white middle-class fortresses needs legitimation.

This legitimation is offered by various stratagems of “re-moralizing” politics, that is, of stigmatizing underclass, precarious, immigrant, and other ethnic minority populations as “undeserving poor,” people abusing the social welfare system, work-shy, criminal, etc. Contemporary racism and “welfare chauvinism” is everywhere. The latter is typified by the Tea Party movement in the United States, where middle-class audiences and opinion groups are vociferously rejecting help for those (including other middle-class subgroups) that are outside the health benefit/insurance system. These are tacitly acknowledged as being black or Latino/a, allegedly protected in a partisan manner by a black president. Ronald Reagan’s white working-class and lower-middle-class voters may be back. According to Karl Kautsky — in a brilliant essay unearthed by the London periodical Historical Materialism (easily a competitor to Grünberg’s Archiv) — the answer to Werner Sombart’s famous question as to why there is no socialism in the United States is blacks. This situation is now extended to the whole white world. The class struggle is foiled by the ethnic conflict, clearly exacerbated by deliberate and well-aimed political action — in Western Europe chiefly against Muslim immigrants, in Eastern Europe against the Roma plus Northern Caucasus ethnics and Kosovar Albanian migrants. Nor are traditional enmities neglected: ethnic Hungarian minorities in Slovakia and the Ukraine are prevented from freely using their mother tongue in shameless violation of their constitutions and of international and European law.

The Left is everywhere faced with an intractable dilemma: how to achieve a political situation wherein the blue-collar workers of the global rust belt, the precarious sub-proletarians, the civil servants of various kinds, the students, and the ethnic minorities (including the migrants) are able to make common cause and turn against the system instead of turning against one another? This recipe has not been found. The post-Trotskyite Socialist Workers' Party in Britain and the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (ex-Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire) in France are forging alliances with Muslims — but with those attacked by the other members of the Left for neglecting the plight of oppressed Muslim women and so on. Basically, the mainstream Left is increasingly using veiled racist (properly speaking) ethnicist/culturalist arguments. One of the two co-sponsors of the draft bill banning the Islamic veil in public places at the National Assembly in France is a communist. The other is, of course, a Gaullist. The far Left, though, is increasingly identified with ethnic issues and it is gradually slipping towards the ineffectual liberal rhetoric of human rights. The result is naturally the triumph of the likes of Sarkozy and Berlusconi and some of their even worse colleagues in Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, and everywhere in Eastern Europe.

The social/ethnic discrimination has its secondary uses as well. It legitimizes a return to the police state that was hardly a real danger for majorities in the West. But it is now. Prisons chock-a-block with mainly ethnic sub-proletarians are not any longer a peculiarity of the United States. Left-wing radicalism is beaten by the wave of social and racial exclusion (and in some places by fascist activism) and so is the hope of egalitarian or socialist transformation.

The necessary fusion of the various sectors of the oppressed is — again or, if you wish, eternally — the problem of emancipation and, what is the same thing, of anti-capitalist combat, and this need a renewal of radical political philosophy — beyond the already quite considerable results it has achieved, but which have failed to help to overcome this largest of obstacles.

What comes next for you — politically and theoretically?

I think this flows from my previous response. It is increasingly necessary to create a theory that can overcome the perennial temptation of Rousseauian egalitarianism with its ineluctable aporias around the General Will, but which is nevertheless able to offer a normative view of communist society without utopianism. In the absence of that, the Left will be necessarily led back to a political practice aimed at a homogeneous society created against personal autonomy in order to get rid of the mortal sin of exclusion, humiliation, and injustice. If we have learned one thing from the twentieth century, it is that this is neither feasible nor desirable.

Nor is it tolerable that we should acquiesce in what I have called in a Paris conference (Puissance[s] du communisme, in the memory of our friend, recently deceased, Daniel Bensaïd, theoretician of the LCR/NPA and many other lives besides, at the Université de Paris-8, Vincennes Saint-Denis) une civilisation de merde. This is not to be borne any more.

For this, I feel we need a renewed interpretation of the state and of law, of labor and money, of justice and legitimacy. Most of the prevailing theories concerning these are tailored to suit the needs of liberal class societies that clearly are in a deep — and by no means only economic — crisis. This is work enough. I’ll try at least to start it, and of course I am not the only one (far from it!) to be willing to engage in it. The results will have to come, since they are sorely needed.

1.

Mihály Vörösmarty (1800-1855), one of the most important Hungarian dramatists and poets of the nineteenth century, and poet and writer János Arany (1817-1882), famous for his epic trilogy on the life of legendary nobleman Miklós Toldi.
2. back

Konstantin Paustovsky (1892-1968), a once-prominent Sovier writer nominated for the 1965 Nobel Prize for literature — a prize that ultimately went to Mikhail Sholokhov.
3. back

The reference here is to the group of scholars associated with Lukács, typically referred to as the Budapest School, which included Agnes Heller, Ferenc Fehér, György Márkus, and Mihály Vajda, among others. See Ferenc Fehér and Agnes Heller, eds., Reconstructing Aesthetics: Writings of the Budapest School (New York: Blackwell, 1986) and András Hegedűs, ed., The Humanisation of Socialism: Writings of the Budapest School (London: Allison and Busby, 1976).
4. back

The reference here is to talks that took place from February 6 to April 4, 1989, in Warsaw, between the Jaruzelski government and the Solidarity trade union; they were initiated by the government to offset the widespread social unrest that had developed in Poland due to the activities of Solidarity and a generalized and intractable economic crisis in the country. Amongst the outcomes of these talks was the legitimation of Solidarity as a political party and an elected Presidency and Senate. It was this that allowed Solidarity to win a landslide in the election of June 1989.
5. back

See David Ost, The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Europe (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2005).
6. back

In Hungarian, “jobb” means both “right” and “better.” “Jobbik” is a play on words: the party claims through its name to be both the best party and the one farthest to the right. The word is also used in a familiar expression: “előveszi a jobbik eszét” or “to begin to see the light.”
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Miruna MUNTEANU. Tismăneanu, comunismul și evreii

Vă rog să citiți acest text selectat de mine, în speranța că vă poate interesa.Cu prietenie, Dan Culcer

Vladimir Tismăneanu face referință la acest articol al Mirunei Munteanu, din Ziua, într-un text publicat pe blogul său. Cum ziarul nu mai există, preiau din alte surse acest text. In legătură cu publicarea în revista Observatorul cultural a unui articol de Ovidiu Șimonca,V.T. zice că :

« articolul se intituleaza “Cine seamana vant culege furtuna” si se refera expressis verbis, in primul paragraf, la atacurile antisemite impotriva mea, dupa care urmeaza povestea “cauzelor furtunii”. Unele dintre aceste atacuri infame au fost respinse cum se cuvine in articolul mentionat al d-lui Andrei Plesu (celelalte au venit ulterior). Simplu, clar, transant, fara fandari si fara trimiteri piezise la pretinse explicatii pentru ceea ce este absolut nejustificabil. Aceste atacuri nu au nimic de-a face cu schimbarea conducerii IICCMER ori cu analiza pe care o fac situatiei din Romania si pe care Ovidiu Simonca o considera “propaganda pro-Traian Basescu”. Ele dureaza din anii 90, cum usor poate constata dl Simonca daca va rasfoi presa extremista (si numai, ba chiar si cea fesenista) a epocii. Ii reamintesc ca in 2006, in Ziua, doamna Miruna Munteanu publica un articol cu “argumente” similare celor din Asymetria intitulat “Tismaneanu, comunismul si evreii”. Mi-e teama ca noua tematica, la care regret sa-l vad subscriind, ar suna “Tismaneanu, Basescu si evreii”.

O lectură de bună credință a articolului Mirunei Munteanu, pe care îl reproduc integral mai jos, ca și a celui din Asymetria a lui Ioan Roșca, intitulat Scrisoare deschisă către Sorin Ilieșiu, va permite o comparație reală, care va proba că între cele două texte nu există nici o legătură, în ciuda apropierii pe care, arc peste timp, o execută V. T.
Mai ales fiindcă textul lui Ioan Roșca descrie activitatea lui Sorin Ilieșiu și nu pe aceea a lui V.T.
Comparația va permite eventual eliminarea tezei unor atacuri antisemite recente («furtună antisemită» exagerează V.T. pe urmele lui Șimonca, din Cine seamănă vînt culege furtună, Observatorul cultural, nr. 537, 2010) la adresa lui Tismăneanu, inventată integral pentru a motiva operațiunea de victimizare la care se pretează Vladimir Tismăneanu, în folosul ridicării sale pe piedestalul expertului anticomunist, atacat fie de criptocomuniști, fie de securiști, fie de anti-băsescieni, fie de te miri cine. Nu m-aș mira dacă situația inventată, bătută să fie spumoasă, va fi folosită de prietenii lui V. T. pentru a-l împinge să candideze și la postul de director științific al Institutului de studiere a holocaustului în România. Astfel se va realiza visul celor care doresc punerea sub o conducere unitară, prin comasare, a institutelor de cercetare care au același obiect de studiu, câte au mai rămas necomasate, incluzînd desigur Institutul pentru studiul totalitarismului. Glumesc.
Centralismul democratic se va întrupa.

Tismaneanu, comunismul si evreii


de Miruna MUNTEANU
"Agentul Volodea", articolul care, sambata, a fost capul acestui ziar, a provocat reactii violente din partea altor redactii bucurestene. Doi cunoscuti analisti au sarit imediat in apararea lui Vladimir Tismaneanu, catalogand dezvaluirile din ZIUA drept calomnii demne de "Romania Mare". Personal, nu am suficiente informatii despre biografia domnului Tismaneanu, asa ca ma voi abtine de la orice fel de speculatii pe aceasta tema. Ma intriga, insa, acuzatiile de "antisemitism" lansate la adresa lui Vladimir Alexe, autorul articolului incriminat.
Paragraful "inflamant"? Iata-l: "In momentul de fata exista in Romania considerabile interese pentru ca de instaurarea si perpetuarea comunismului sa fie responsabilizat poporul roman. Cei care au adus comunismul in Romania, care l-au sustinut ca o veritabila coloana, trebuie sa se piarda in neant, iar romanilor sa li se bage pe gat faptul ca au sustinut o "societate criminala", comunista. Romanii "victime ale comunismului "vor deveni, in acest caz, autorii lui, ceea ce este esential."
"Incitare antisemita!" - au sarit in sus paznicii corectitudinii politice. De ce s-or fi gandit ei, oare, imediat la evrei? Din cate stiu eu, comunismul a fost impus in Romania de tancurile sovietice. Cei care le-au condus puteau fi rusi, evrei, kargazi, georgieni sau uzbeci. Oricum, nu conteaza. Vinovatia apartine Moscovei.
Comunismul nu a inflorit in mod spontan in Romania, asa cum s-a intamplat cu national-socialismul in Germania interbelica. Inainte de 1945, numarul ilegalistilor PCR se situa in jur de o mie. Halal aderenta la mase! Poporul roman a fost "convertit" fortat de armatele sovietice "eliberatoare". Nu a avut de ales. Soarta sa - ca si a intregii Europe rasaritene - fusese hotarata la Ialta.
Romanii nu au inventat singuri sistemul diabolic care i-a martirizat timp de 45 de ani. Sistemul a fost proiectat, implementat si apoi monitorizat de Moscova. A produs si monstri autohtoni, dar reteta era a Kremlinului. Masinaria infernala a fost pusa in functiune de comisarii sovietici, chiar daca, mai tarziu, ea a functionat cu mana de lucru romaneasca. Intreaga tara devenise, deja, un vast spatiu concentrationar.
Evident, influenta Moscovei nu-i disculpa pe conationalii nostri care au facut pactul cu diavolul. Ar trebui sa simplifice, insa, demersul asteptat din partea lui Traian Basescu. Presedintele nu are de condamnat natiunea romana (asa cum pare ca se teme), ci doar un regim impus cu sila. De ce este necesar un studiu special care sa confirme nocivitatea cancerului venit de la rusi? N-am idee. Sper ca Vladimir Alexe se insala atunci cand sugereaza ca se incearca promovarea teoriei "vinovatiei colective". Pe principiul "toti am gresit, toti suntem in aceeasi oala, nimeni nu poate fi condamnat". Moral, evident.
In lipsa de argumente, adeptii acestei teorii isi acuza adversarii de "antisemitism". Vezi Doamne, lumea se leaga de "oamenii Moscovei" fiindca erau - majoritatea - de origine evreiasca, nu fiindca au pus bazele comunismului in România. Total fals. Inca inainte de a-si schimba numele cu rezonante specifice, indivizii respectivi se lepadasera de religia mozaica, sacrificand-o pe altarul ateismului stiintific. Ca se nascusera evrei, nu mai avea nici o importanta. Noua lor Bibilie era Manifestul Partidului Comunist. Patria? Uniunea Sovietica!
Corifeilor comunismului romanesc nu li se reproseaza ereditatea, ci activitatea. Unii se fac, insa, ca nu inteleg. "In ce ma priveste, voi fi greu de convins ca majoritatea celor vreo patru milioane de comunisti existenti in 1989 in Romania erau evrei", scrie Mircea Mihaies. De data aceasta, el este cel de rea-credinta, confundandu-i in mod deliberat pe cotizantii PCR din deceniul opt cu activistii, ideologii si tortionarii anilor '50. E ca si cum ai pune un semn de egalitate intre Nicolski si un biet mecanic de la IMGB, intrat in partid pentru un loc in fata pe lista de butelii.
Intr-adevar, cei patru milioane de comunisti din 1989 nu erau nici evrei si nici rusi. Dar nici comunisti. Erau, in marea lor majoritate, niste nefericiti care incercau sa supravietuiasca intr-un sistem aberant. Victime, nu călai. Ce spuneam despre teoria "vinovatiei colective"?
O confuzie la fel de bizară face și Mircea Dinescu, care denunta "incercarea de a-l culpabiliza pe Vladimir Tismăneanu că s-a născut din parinti evrei". Greșit. Părintilor in chestiune nu li se reproseaza ca erau evrei, ci ca au fost nomenclaturiști. Fapt care, si in opinia mea, face nepotrivita numirea fiului lor in fruntea Comisiei pentru studierea crimelor comunismului.
Sunt de acord ca păcatele părintilor nu ar trebui să le fie imputate copiilor. Sunt gata să-l creditez pe domnul Tismăneanu cu cele mai bune intenții. Totuși, măcar și pe considerente de imagine, alegerea sa a fost prost inspirată. Este ca și când fiul unui înalt responsabil nazist ar fi fost numit în fruntea unei Comisii de studiere a Holocaustului.
ZIUA / 16 mai 2006

Pe bază de competență și fiindcă a cunoscut din interior mediul nazist, aș adăuga eu.
Asta este fraza care l-a enervat pe V. T. Nu e vorba deci de originea rasială, etnică, de religia neamului Tismăneanu, ci de pătura socială căreia i-au aparținut, de opțiunile ideologice și politice ale părinților săi și, mai ales de contextul formării sale ca viitor ideolog. Lepădarea lui V. T. de dogma de grup s-a petrecut încă din tinerețe, acesta fiind cazul multor progenituri din descendența activiștilor de partid, adepți declarați ai modelului capitalist, într-un soi de snobism sui generis, chiar dacă în exterior se conformau, câtă vreme era necesar, regulelor sociale comuniste. Deci, dincolo de relația directă cu părinții, lui V.T. nu i-a fost greu să devină ceea ce a devenit. Emigrarea lui, facilitată tocmai de apartenența la grupul social respectiv, a favorizat reciclarea, reciclare care nu a reușit decât după 1990 unora din membrii grupului său rămași în țară.
Un marxizant, sociologiul Pierre Bourdieu, criticat pentru un determinism excesiv, a demonstrat totuși convingător tendința auto-reproductivă a burgheziei de stat. Asta se aplică și burgheziei de stat roșii. Vladimir Tismăneanu a rămas, prin mentalitatea în interiorul căreia s-a format, un membru al burgheziei roșii din ultima sa fază, înainte de Restaurație. Comportamentul său social îl definește ca atare fiindcă se integrează plenar în rețelele de comunicare și de solidaritate ale acestei burghezii roșii revopsite, mai puțin omogenă acum, îmbogățită cu elementele integrate, recuperate din burghezia supraviețuitoare, care au înțeles utilitatea solidarizării, așa cum au făcut-o poate mai naiv, mai puțin cinic, cei din generația anterioară și în 1945, în cadrul acțiunii de cooptare a «tovarășilor de drum».

«Judecarea cuiva pe baza de antecedente genetice (origine socială ori etnică) este o atitudine inadmisibilă, ofensatoare și repugnantă.» -scrie V.T. în «Ovidiu Simonca si problema antisemitismului » lăsînd să se creadă că cineva e pe cale să-l judecă pe EL pe baza unor astfel de criterii, inadecvate desigur.
Judecarea cuiva doar pe aceaste două baze este greșită, reductivă, evident. Există alte criterii : valorice, morale, estetice. Tismăneanu coagulează abuziv cei doi termeni, sub eticheta "antecedente genetice" știind bine că nu sunt echivalenți. Nu poate fi vorba de antecedente genetice, fiindcă originea socială nu e o genă ci o situație socială ierarhică care poate fi modificată, prin ascensiune sau cădere socială, prin dislocare, așa cum au făcut comuniștii cu burghezia antebelică. Ar fi genetică doar dacă prin genetică am înțelege un dat inevitabil și imuabil: de genul "Ce se naște din pisică, șoareci mânâncă". Spre deosebire de originea etnică sau rasială, în principiu mai greu de modificat, contestat, care nici ea nu e doar genetică, ci culturală. O confuzie necesară lui V.T. doar pentru inducerea ideii că ne aflăm în fața unui atac «rasist», antisemit. Dar evreii nu sunt o rasă, nici o clasă.



Dan Culcer

Tismaneanu, interviu pentru blogul Istodor

Vă rog să citiți acest text selectat de mine, în speranța că vă poate interesa.Cu prietenie, Dan Culcer

Tismaneanu, interviu pentru blogul Istodor: “Omul se simte debusolat, spatiul spiritual s-a rarefiat, domnesc cinismul, narcisismul si frivolitatea ignara”

Da Tismaneanu, Vladimir Tismaneanu, intr-un interviu despre individ, cultura, miturile omului modern, pacatele lumii, credinta, moarte, sinucidere si viata.

ISTODOR: Ce e în capul lui Tismăneanu?

TISMANEANU: Acum, cand raspund la aceste intrebari, sunt imagini cu Tony Judt, marele istoric, intelectual public prin excelenta, un prieten drag trecut in lumea celor drepti in urma cu cateva zile. Imi revin in amintire discutiile purtate de-a lungul anilor despre totalitarism, despre straniul peisaj al memoriei post-comuniste. Sunt multe idei, framantari, dileme, pentru ca nu cred ca mintea si sufletul pot fi despartite. Nu sunt certitudini, pentru ca multi ani m-am dezvatat sa socot ca exista lucruri absolut sigure. Nu este neaparat confortabil sa traiesti sub semnul inceritutidinii, dar este mult mai onest decat sa te minti singur si sa-ti spui ca ai raspunsuri la toate intrebarile lumii.

ISTODOR: V-ați conturat o identitate ca om, ca individ în societate?

TISMANEANU: Parte din identitate ti-o construiesti pe cont propriu, parte ti-o atribuie altii si tu incerci sa te ajustezi, sa te calibrezi la aceste semnale din afara. In ce ma priveste, mai ales in utimii ani, am trait ceea ce Sorin Lavric numeste sfartecarea continua a identitatii. M-am intalnit cu afirmatii absolut aberante, unele venind chiar de la oameni cu care credeam ca sunt apropiat. Am avut si am cultul prieteniei, nu-mi reneg prietenii chiar daca pot avea uneori divergenţe cu unii dintre ei. Despartirile, distantarile mele nu sunt nevrotice. Cand ma dezamageste profund un prieten, cand simt ca nu mai nimic comun cu el sau ea, in afara unor amintiri comune, reiau cuvintele lui Camus si ii doresc: Bonne chance.
Nu cred ca am vreun rol special, poate doar acela de a sintetiza (uneori, sper, si cu o doza de originalitate) idei care mie mi se par esentiale pentru bunul mers al lumii in care ne este dat sa traim. Ca profesor, aceasta imi este menirea, sa asez informatiile istorice, politice, economice intr-o grila corerenta, sa racordez traditia la sfidarile unui univers in perpetua schimbare, sa incurajez gandirea critica a studentilor, sa-i invat sa trateze ideile cu maxima seriozitate. Asa imi scriu eseurile-recenzii care apar in Times Literary Supplement, asa imi scriu articlele care apar in tara (in EvZ, in 22, in Orizont, in Verso, in Apostrof), ori in Polonia, Italia etc A contat mult perioada cand am fost editorul revistei trimestriale East European Politics and Societies (1998-2004). Am invatat atunci cat de complex este statutul unui redactor sef intr-o publicatie academica occidentala, cum trebuie sa lupti pentru a mentine neutralitatea axiologica a demersului stiintific, care sunt marile avantaje (dar si unele dezavantaje) ale sistemului de peer-review.
ISTODOR: Ați făcut alegerile fundamentale ca individ?
TISMANEANU: Aceste alegeri le-am facut cu decenii in urma, cand m-am despartit, constient si nu fara sfasieri interioare, de valorile in care au crezut parintii mei. Valori care aveau, desigur, doza lor de altruism, de idealism, dar care fusesera oribil desfigurate inca de la debutul experimentului bolsevic. Altfel spus, valorile unei stangi revolutionare care dorea distrugerea din temelii a „lumii vechi”. Cand l-am citit pe Raymond Aron—era prin 1971-1972—am inteles ca nu exista o stiinta marxista a revolutiei, ca „lupta claselor” era de fapt parte a acelui miraj pe care el l-a numit opiul intelectualilor. Evident ca exista tensiuni sociale, dar este o himera faptul ca dinamica sociala conduce inevitabil la revolutii, ca „proletariatul” are misiunea de a izbavi o umanitate cazuta in pacatul proprietatii private etc Am facut apoi alegeri legate de profesiune (sa aleg University of Maryland in raport cu alte oferte), de locul unde aveam sa traiesc, de intemeierea unei familii, de calauzirea in viata a fiului meu Adam care implineste 15 ani la sfarsitul lunii august. Am facut o alegere care mi-a marcat destinul in clipa cand am acceptat propunerea presedintelui Traian Basescu de a conduce Comisia Prezidentiala pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din Romania. A fost si ramane un pariu existential aceasta lupta pentru asumarea trecutului, pentru cunoasterea a ceea ce s-a petrecut vreme de decenii in Romania comunizata. Nu pot concepe ca vinovatii pentru crime impotriva umanitatii sunt beneficiarii unei impunitati obscene. se bucura de scandaloase privilegii. Am scris acum cativa aniin EvZ un articol cu titlul „Moartea se numeste Enoiu”. Anul acesta, in iunie, s-a relansat la IICCMER actiunea inceputa maai demult de sesizare a justitiei privind cazul tortionarului Gh. Enoiu, am avut acolo un simpozion „”Professiunea mea, tortura”). Nu pot concepe, ca istoric politic, ca politolog, ca intelectual cum nu se pot gasi vinovatii pentru criumele din decembrie 1989 ori pentru mineriada din iunie 1990. Dupa atatia ani, in Argentina ori Chile, crimele comise sub dictaturile militare raman imprescriptibele. Nu inteleg de ce nu putem ajunge mai rapid si in Romania la aceeasi situatie.

ISTODOR: Munca e în America, patima în România? De ce?

TISMANEANU: N-as crede ca este vorba de o prapastie intre ce scriu, ce predau, ce spun aici in Statele Unite si ce fac in Romania. Viata mea este un tot, nu este sectionata in emisfere ce se ignora reciproc. Nu scriu cu patima, nu ma angajez decat extrem de rar si cu mari reticente in polemici. Am fost insultat in termeni abominabili si am decis sa nu raspund. S-a spus ca sunt „sforar”, „parvenit”, „oportunist pentru eternitate”, „suflet de sclav”, „un nou Jdanov”, „un mic Goebbels”, ca „fantoma mea bantuie Romania”, ca am distrus oameni, ca am fost secretarul personal ori speechwriter-ul lui Nicu Ceausescu, ca de mic copil ma ocup cu ticalosiile si cate altele. Pozitia mea, ori mai bine spus filosofia mea este „sa raman la toate rece”, sa-mi vad de treaba impreuna cu cei care impartasesc valorile societatii deschise, sa publicam operre durabile din punct de vedere stiintific si moral, sa nu confundam pamfletul cu istoriografia ori politologia. Nu ma intelegeti gresit, evident ca ma afecteaza mizeriile proferate despre mine si familia mea. Dar incerc sa separ registrul emotiilor de acela al analizei. Cartea mea Stalinism pentru eternitate are sanse sa dainuie, mi se spune, tocmai pentru ca nu am sucombat inspitelor acuzatoare. Istoricul nu este procuror, dar el are dreptul sa pronunte judecati morale. Am mai spus-o, a ierta nu inseamna a uita, dar a uita este neiertat. „Tacerea are efecte districtive”, scrie Gesinne Schwann, o distinsa ganditoare germana. Citesc acum cartea scriitorului german Bernhard Schlink (autorul romanului care a stat la baza filmului The Reader) intitulata Guilt about the Past, aparuta in 2009, unde sunt explorate subiecte care ma preocupa de ani de zile: Cum poate fi asumat trecutul prin lege? Care este raportul dintre iertare si reconciliere, dintre prudenta si corputie?

ISTODOR: Povestiți-vă, în 3 rînduri, viața.

TISMANEANU: M-am nascut intr-o familie cu un trecut revolutionar, cu amintiri chinuitoare si cu nelinisti majore. M-am eliberat de iluziile mediului meu de familie, impartasite si de multi prieteni, prin cunoastere, prin refuzul de a inchide ochii si de a consimti la injustitie. Am pornit pe un drum, intr-o cautare in care nimic nu este mai important decat libertatea umana. Sunt fericit ca sunt departe de a fi singur. Valorile in care cred, pe care le sustin, pentru care lupt se numesc incredere, adevar, toleranta. Nu suport sistemele inchise, spatiile cu frontiere rigide, enclavele autarhice. Sectele iluminate (religioase ori laice) ma infricoseaza.

ISTODOR: Spuneți un rînd despre politică.

TISMANEANU: Cand este practicata onest, intareste demnitatea, cand este falsificata, umileste si tradeaza onoarea umana.
ISTODOR: Cum e lumea din jur? Cum e Romania? Ce anume vă dă siguranță?
TISMANEANU: Lumea este in mare masura exteriorizarea trairilor mele, a actelor mele cognitive si de vointa. Nu trebuie sa fii neaparat adeptul lui Schopenhauer pentru a admite ca vointa umana are un rol esential in configurarea unui univers in care ratiunea nu este condamnata sa se auto-distruga. Romania a iesit dintr-un cosmar numit totalitarismul comunist. Se reface, a trecut prin cateva terapii esuate. In pofida stirilor de un devastator pesimism, multe dintre ele hiperbole fara legatura cu situatiile reale, eu cred ca in Romania exista un proiect reformator in directia cladirii statului de drept. Nu pot accepta proclamatiile (pentru ca proclamatii sunt, nu analize) privind „cezarismul”, „bonapartismul”, „dictatura”. Am studiat destul dictaturile (inclusiv pe cele din America Latina) pentru a nu ma lasa inselat de asemenea grabite imprecatii. Imi da siguranta faptul ca ma regasesc, moral si valoric, in familia mea, in afinitatile atat de profunde cu sotia mea, cu prietenii apropiati.

ISTODOR: De ce trăiți?

TISMANEANU: In clipele de disperare imi amintesc mereu de cuvintele lui Malraux, „o viata de om nu valoreaza nimic, dar nimic nu valoreaza cat o viata de om”. Traiesc pentru ca stiu ca exista legaturi invizibile, comunicari secrete menite sa ne asigure accesul la adevaratele sensuri, la autenticele adevaruri. Traiesc pentru ca nazuiesc asmenei unui mare poet rus, Boris Pasternak, sa ajung cumva „la ultimu-nteles/Esenta drumului ascuns/Si-a sufletului, mai ales” (citez din memorie, traducerea ii aprtine lui Marin Sorescu).

ISTODOR: De ce nu vă sinucideți?

TISMANEANU: Pentru ca n-as putea sa-i fac asa ceva lui Mary, sotia mea, ori fiului nostru Adam. Pentru ca ar fi o forma de recuzare a unui pact al iubirii pe care l-am facut cu ei (nevorbit, nescris). Pentru ca, fie ca o veti crede sau nu, nu am motive sa ma sinucid. Pentru ca, fiind un personaj angoasat, sunt totusi un om fericit. Pentru ca in fiecare dimineata insorita imim amintesc ce-mi spunea candva dl Gavril Gabor, profesorul meu de engleza, un om trecut prin experientele teribile ale veacului trecut: „Sunt mult mai multi oameni pe lume dispusi sa faca bine decat ai crede traind in Romania lui Ceausescu”.

ISTODOR: Ce cărți, dintre cărțile mari vorbesc, nu veți citi vreodată?

TISMANEANU: Marile poeme epice medievale, Cantecul despre oastea lui Igor, literaturile orientale pe care le respect enorm dar de care ma simt extrem de indepartat.

ISTODOR: Care-i cartea de suflet, cu care nu prea vă vine să vă lăudați?

TISMANEANU: Contele de Monte Cristo, dar de fapt ma laud cu ea.

ISTODOR: Care vi se par miturile omului de azi? De ce simte nevoia să fie vrăjit?

TISMANEANU: De cand a inceput aventura sa in planul modernitatii, omul se simte instrainat de radacini, de traditii. Este un univers din care, spre a-l relua pe Heidegger, dar si pe Eliade, sacrul a fost expulzat. Omul se simte debusolat, spatiul spiritual s-a rarefiat, domnesc cinismul, naricisismul si frivolitatea ignara. Marile probleme, pe langa cele sociale si economice, sunt debusolarea, descumpanirea, dezradacinarea. De aici si atractia spre ceea ce eu numesc fantasmele salvarii. Mai ales in lumea post-comunista se tanjeste tupa formule magice de mantuire imedita, hic et nunc.
ISTODOR: Credeți în extratereștri?

TISMANEANU: Nu cred, dar ET este unul din filmele mele favorite.

ISTODOR: Dar în magie, vrăji?

TISMANEANU: Nu mai mult, dar nici mai putin decat credea Thomas Mann cand a scris Muntele vrajit. Cred ca exista forte diabolice, ca ratiunea este vulnerabila, ca hipnoza nu este un fenomen strict individual ci poate capata forme de masa, cu consecinte catastrofice. Elias Canetti este unul dintre scriitorii mei favoriti.
ISTODOR: Vedeți viitorul într-o Putere a Rusiei și a Chinei? Nu vă înspăimîntă?

TISMANEANU: Nu cred ca va exista un condominium ruso-chinez. Geopolitic si istoric aceste doua imperii au prea multe motive de conflict pentru a ajunge la un mariaj fericit.

ISTODOR: Cum arată viitorul personal? Dar al lumii? Dacă îți vezi lungul nasului, poți presimți mișcările celorlalți?

TISMANEANU: Voi mai scrie cateva carti, voi calatori impreuna cu familia mea, voi mai conduce doctorate, voi continua sa colaborez cu prietenii din Romania pentru a duce la bun sfarsit demersul decomunizarii. Voi fi fericit sa merg cu Adam sa vizitam diverse colegii pentru a-si alege locul unde va studia. Ma ocup de de ai mei si de mine, nu de altii. Cuvintele lui Lucian Blaga mi se par cat se poate de potrivite atunci cand ne bate gandul de a da lectii si de a ne pretinde profeti: „Sa fim noi insine sub stelele noastre si sa-i lasam si pe altii sa fie tot ei insisi sub stelele lor”.

ISTODOR: Trăim un univers predictibil?

TISMANEANU: Exista o parabola de Kafka intitulata Intre trecut si viitor. Titlul a fost reluat de Hannah Arendt pentru o colectie din eseurile ei filosofico-politice. Viitorul este doar pana la un punct previzibil pentru ca prezentul insusi nu este niciodata incheiat, epuizat, consumat. Viitorul incepe chiar acum, dupa cum trecutul este si el aici. In 1919 nimeni nu putea prevedea ca peste doua decenii omenirea va cunoaste o noua conflagratie mondiala. Nu cred in determinism istoric, sunt convins ca exista intotdeauna o marja a libertatii subiective.

ISTODOR: Care-s greșelile lumii de azi? Dar păcatele?

TISMANEANU: Nu ma pretind un guru, un intelept care sa arate cu degetul spre pacatele lumii. Prefer sa-l citesc pe Nietzsche, nu sa pozez in Zarathustra eu insumi. Ma gandesc mai mult la virtutile lumii decat la pacatele ei. La Hannah Arendt pretuiesc tocmai ceea ce se cheama amor mundi. As merge oricand la Roma sa revad Capela Sixtina. Mari erori, daca este sa ma pronunt, mi se par indepartarea de valorile vesnice (cum le numea D. D. Roşca), hedonismul, mercantilismul, fetisismul tehnologiilor de ultima ora, absenta compasiunii.

ISTODOR: Incălzirea globală a existat pentru Tismăneanu? Cum?

TISMANEANU: Bucurestiul copilariei mele, cu adierile de vant la ceasul inserarii, a cam disparut. Caldurile verilor actuale sunt ca la Washington, ca in Sudul Statelor Unite, apasatoare, nesfarsite si umede

ISTODOR: Vă e frica de Criză? Vă adaptați ei? Care-i atitudinea potrivită în astfel de momente?

TISMANEANU: Nu sunt panicat, urmaresc atent ce se scrie, cred in vocile rationale, conversez cu oameni care chiar stiu despre ce vorbesc. Nu ma las coplesit de cascadele de afirmatii care vestesc colapsul economiei de piata, esecul liberalismului si alte asemenea scenarii apocaliptice. Stiu destul despre ineficienta absoluta a planificarii de tip leninist pentru a nu cadea in asemenea capcane ideologice.

ISTODOR: Ce înseamna credința în Dumnezeu pentru Tismăneanu? Ce-nseamnă religia pentru societatea de azi?

TISMANEANU: Inseamna ca exista un principiu spiritual care da sens lumii, ca nu suntem pur si simplu un accident in marea serie a unui Cosmos fara noima, ca exista o forta care desparte Binele de Rau, ca sacrificiile pentru libertate sunt justificate dincolo de o imanenţă pieritoare si inselatoare. Comunistii si fascistii au vrut sa aneantizeze religia, l-au abolit propagandistic pe Dumnezeu, au creat propriile lor contra-religii (pagane, seculare). Nu actionau astfel in chip absurd ori gratuit: stiau ce voiau sa nimiceasca. Disparitia lui Dumnezeu inseamna deschiderea portilor pentru jocurile ideologice de-a perfectiunea umana. Jocuri morbide care, o stim, au dus la Auschwitz si la Gulag.

Le plan de Staline pour conquérir l'Europe

Vă rog să citiți acest text selectat de mine, în speranța că vă poate interesa.Cu prietenie, Dan Culcer

Le plan de Staline pour conquérir l'Europe
Comment l'Union Soviétique «perdit» la 2ème Guerre Mondiale
Poslednyaya Respublika («La dernière république»), par Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun). Moscou : TKO ACT, 1996. 470 pages. Couverture cartonnée. Photographies.

Un commentaire de Daniel W. Michaels.

Il y a maintenant plusieurs années de cela, un ancien officier du renseignement militaire soviétique nommé Vladimir Rezun provoqua de vives discussions en Russie à cause de son affirmation sensationnelle, selon laquelle Hitler a attaqué la Russie soviétique en juin 1941, au moment exact où Staline se préparait à submerger l'Allemagne et l'Europe de l'Ouest, en prélude à une opération bien préparée, visant à «libérer» toute l'Europe en la mettant sous domination communiste.

Ecrivant sous le nom de plume de Viktor Suvorov, Rezun a développé cette thèse dans trois livres. Le Brise-glace (qui a été traduit en anglais et en français [1989] ) et Dni M («M-Day») ont été présentés dans le Journal of Historical Review, nov-déc. 1997. Le troisième livre, présenté ici, est un ouvrage de 470 pages, «La dernière république : pourquoi l'Union Soviétique perdit la Seconde Guerre Mondiale», publié à Moscou en 1996.

Suvorov présente une abondance de preuves, montrant que quand Hitler déclencha son «Opération Barbarossa» contre la Russie Soviétique le 22 juin 1941, les forces allemandes purent infliger d'énormes pertes aux Soviétiques précisément parce que les troupes russes étaient très bien préparées pour la guerre -- mais pour une guerre d'agression qui fut programmée pour le début de juillet -- et pas pour la guerre défensive qui leur fut imposée par l'attaque préventive de Hitler.

MapDans le Brise-glace, Suvorov détaille le déploiement des forces soviétiques en juin 1941, décrivant exactement de quelle manière Staline amassa de vastes quantités de troupes et de stocks d'armements le long de la frontière européenne, pas pour défendre la patrie soviétique, mais en préparation d'une attaque vers l'ouest et de batailles décisives en territoire ennemi.

Ainsi, quand les forces allemandes frappèrent, le gros des forces russes, terrestres et aériennes, étaient concentrées le long des frontières ouest de l'URSS, en face des pays européens contigus, particulièrement le Reich allemand et la Roumanie, prêtes pour l'assaut final contre l'Europe.

Dans son second livre sur les origines de la guerre, M-Day («Jour de mobilisation»), Suvorov décrit comment, entre la fin de 1939 et l'été de 1941, Staline construisit méthodiquement et systématiquement la force militaire la mieux armée, la plus puissante dans le monde -- véritablement la première superpuissance du monde -- pour sa future conquête de l'Europe. Suvorov explique comment la conversion drastique de l'économie du pays pour la guerre, voulue par Staline, rendait la guerre réellement inévitable. [Image: Dès la mi-juin 1941, d'énormes forces de l'Armée Rouge étaient concentrées sur la frontière ouest de l'URSS, prêtes pour une attaque dévastatrice contre l'Europe. Ce diagramme parut dans l'édition en langue anglaise du magazine allemand Signal.]

Une Union Soviétique Mondiale

Dans La dernière république, Suvorov ajoute d'autres preuves à celles présentées dans ses deux livres précédents, pour appuyer son affirmation selon laquelle Staline se préparait à une guerre d'agression, en soulignant les motivations idéologiques des actions du dirigeant soviétique. Le titre fait allusion au malheureux pays qui devait être incorporé en tant que «République finale» dans «l'Union des Républiques Socialistes Soviétiques» mondiale, complétant ainsi le révolution prolétarienne mondiale.

Comme l'explique Suvorov, ce plan était entièrement en accord avec la doctrine marxiste-léniniste, ainsi qu'avec la politique de Lénine dans les premières années du régime soviétique. L'historien russe argue de manière convaincante que ce ne fut pas Léon Trotsky (Bronstein), mais plutôt Staline, son moins flamboyant rival, qui fut réellement le fidèle disciple de Lénine pour la poursuite de la Révolution Communiste Mondiale. Trotsky insistait sur la doctrine de la «révolution permanente», par laquelle le jeune Etat soviétique aiderait à fomenter des soulèvements et des révolutions ouvrières à l'intérieur des pays capitalistes.

A la place de cela, Staline voulait que le régime soviétique tire avantage «d'armistices» occasionnels dans la lutte mondiale pour consolider la force militaire soviétique, afin qu'au bon moment des forces soviétiques plus importantes et mieux armées puissent frapper en Europe du Centre et de l'Ouest, ajoutant de nouvelles républiques soviétiques quand cette force écrasante se mettrait en marche à travers le continent. Après la consolidation réussie et la soviétisation de toute l'Europe, l'URSS renforcée serait prête à imposer le pouvoir soviétique à tout le globe.

Comme le montre Suvorov, Staline comprit très bien que s'ils avaient le choix, les peuples des pays avancés de l'Occident ne choisiraient jamais volontairement le communisme. Il serait donc nécessaire de l'imposer par la force. Staline décida alors que son plan audacieux ne pouvait être réalisé que par une guerre mondiale.

Une preuve d'importance décisive à cet égard est le discours de Staline du 19 août 1939, récemment retrouvé dans les archives soviétiques (cité en partie dans Journal of Historical Review de nov-déc. 1997, p. 32-33). Dans ce discours, l'héritier de Lénine déclare:

L'expérience des vingt dernières années a montré qu'en temps de paix le mouvement communiste n'est jamais suffisamment fort pour prendre le pouvoir. La dictature d'un tel parti deviendra possible seulement en résultat d'une guerre majeure

Plus tard, tous les pays qui avaient accepté la protection de l'Allemagne renaissante deviendront aussi nos alliés. Nous aurons un large champ d'action pour développer la révolution mondiale.

De plus, et comme les théoriciens soviétiques l'ont toujours affirmé, le communisme ne pourrait jamais coexister pacifiquement sur le long terme avec d'autres systèmes socio-politiques. En conséquence, la domination communiste devrait inévitablement être imposée au monde. Ce but de «révolution mondiale» était tellement consubstantiel à la nature et au développement du «premier Etat des travailleurs» qu'il fut un trait cardinal du programme soviétique, même avant que Hitler et son mouvement national-socialiste arrive au pouvoir en Allemagne en 1933.

Staline voulait frapper au moment et à l'endroit de son choix. A cette fin, le développement soviétique des systèmes d'armes offensives les plus avancées, principalement les blindés, les avions, et les forces aéroportées, avait déjà commencé au début des années 30. Pour assurer le succès de son audacieuse entreprise, Staline ordonna à la fin de 1939 de construire une puissante machine de guerre qui serait supérieure en quantité et en qualité à toutes les forces d'opposition possibles. Son premier ordre secret pour la mobilisation militaro-industrielle totale du pays fut émis en août 1939. Un second ordre de mobilisation totale, cette fois-ci pour la mobilisation militaire, devait être émis le jour où la guerre commencerait.

Déception

L'attaque allemande «Barbarossa» anéantit le plan bien établi de Staline pour «libérer» toute l'Europe. Dans ce sens, affirme Suvorov, Staline «perdit» la 2ème Guerre Mondiale. Le dirigeant soviétique ne pouvait considérer que comme une déception d'avoir «seulement» vaincu l'Allemagne et conquis l'Europe de l'Est et du Centre.

14 jours qui sauvèrent l'Occident

«Nombre d'indices tendent à prouver que la date fixée par Staline pour l'opération «Orage» était le 6 juillet 1941.» (Viktor Suvorov, Le Brise-glace)

«Le commandement fasciste allemand réussit, deux semaines avant la guerre, à devancer nos troupes.» (Général S.P. Ivanov)

«Hitler ne savait pas tout, mais il en savait assez: s'il n'attaquait pas, l'autre attaquerait. (...) Hitler reniflait ce danger. (...) C'était une question de vie ou de mort.» (Léon Degrelle, Persiste et signe)

«Ma conviction profonde est que si le Führer ne nous avait pas donné l'ordre d'attaquer à ce moment-là, les Etats européens et la plupart des sociétés humaines seraient à présent bolchevisés.» (Otto Skorzeny, La guerre inconnue)

«... la puissance russe menaçante, ayant ses têtes de pont préparées sur la Baltique et sur la mer Noire, n'attendait qu'une occasion, c'est-à-dire le moment où l'armée allemande serait suffisament occupée par les puissances occidentales, pour que le front oriental soit ouvert à une attaque massive à laquelle l'Allemagne ne serait pas en mesure de résister.» (Sven Hedin, L'Amérique dans la lutte des continents)

«Staline préparait la guerre dans tous les domaines, en partant de délais qu'il avait fixé lui-même. Hitler déjoua ses calculs.» (Amiral N.G. Kouznetsov)

Selon Suvorov, Staline trahit sa déception de plusieurs manières après la fin de la guerre. D'abord, il laissa le maréchal Joukov conduire le défilé de la victoire en 1945, au lieu de le faire lui-même -- lui, le Commandant suprême. Deuxièmement, aucun défilé officiel de la victoire du 9 mai ne fut même autorisé jusqu'à la mort de Staline en 1953. Troisièmement, Staline ne porta jamais aucune des médailles qu'il avait obtenues après la fin de la 2ème Guerre Mondiale. Quatrièmement, un jour, dans un moment de dépression, il exprima aux membres de son entourage proche son désir de se retirer [du pouvoir] maintenant que la guerre était finie. Cinquièmement, et c'est peut-être le plus révélateur, Staline abandonna le projet, prévu de longue date, du Palais des Soviets.

Un monument inachevé

L'énorme Palais des Soviets, approuvé par le gouvernement soviétique au début des années 30, devait faire 418 mètres de haut, surmonté par une statue de Lénine de 100 mètres de hauteur -- plus haut que l'Empire State Building de New York. Il devait être construit sur le site de l'ancienne Cathédrale du Christ Sauveur. Sur l'ordre de Staline, ce magnifique symbole de la vieille Russie fut rasé en 1931 -- un acte par lequel les dirigeants communistes voulaient effacer symboliquement l'âme de la vieille Russie pour faire place au monument central de l'URSS mondiale.

Toutes les «républiques socialistes» du monde, y compris la «dernière république», devaient être représentées dans le Palais. Le hall principal de ce sanctuaire séculier devait être décoré avec le texte du serment que Staline avait fait en termes quasi-religieux lors des funérailles de Lénine. Il comportait ces paroles : «Lorsqu'il nous quitta, le Camarade Lénine nous légua la responsabilité de renforcer et de développer l'Union des Républiques Socialistes. Nous te jurons, Camarade Lénine, que nous nous acquitterons honorablement de tes commandements sacrés.»

Cependant, seules les premières fondations de ce grandiose monument furent achevées, et pendant les années 90, après l'effondrement de l'URSS, la Cathédrale du Christ Sauveur fut soigneusement reconstruite sur le site.

La version officielle

Pendant des décennies, la version officielle du conflit germano-soviétique de 1941-45, soutenue par les historiens de l'establishment, à la fois en Russie et en Occident, fut à peu près cela:

Hitler déclencha une attaque «éclair» par surprise contre l'Union Soviétique tristement mal-préparée, ridiculisant son chef, le naïf et confiant Staline. Le Führer allemand fut conduit vers l'Orient primitif par la convoitise pour «l'espace vital» et les ressources naturelles, et par sa détermination longuement remâchée de détruire le «communisme juif» une fois pour toutes. Dans son attaque traîtresse, qui était une étape importante de la folle campagne de Hitler pour la «conquête du monde», les agresseurs «nazis» ou «fascistes» submergèrent d'abord toute résistance grâce à leur prépondérance en chars et en avions modernes.

Cette vison des choses, qui fut affirmée par les juges Alliés au Tribunal de Nuremberg après la guerre, est encore largement acceptée, à la fois en Russie et aux Etats-Unis. En Russie aujourd'hui, la plus grande partie du public (et pas seulement ceux qui sont nostalgiques de l'ancien régime soviétique) accepte cette version «politiquement correcte». En effet, elle «explique» les énormes pertes de l'Union Soviétique en hommes et en matériel pendant la 2ème Guerre Mondiale.

Condamné depuis le début

Contrairement à la version officielle selon laquelle l'Union Soviétique n'était pas préparée pour la guerre en juin 1941, en réalité, souligne Suvorov, c'était les Allemands qui n'étaient pas vraiment préparés. Le plan allemand «Barbarossa», hâtivement mis au point, qui visait à une victoire éclair en cinq ou six mois avec des forces numériquement inférieures, avançant en trois larges poussées, était condamné depuis le début.

De plus, note Suvorov, l'Allemagne manquait des matières premières (incluant le pétrole) essentielles pour soutenir une guerre prolongée d'une telle dimension.

Une autre raison du manque de préparation de l'Allemagne, affirme Suvorov, était que ses chefs militaires avaient sérieusement sous-estimé la performance des forces soviétiques pendant la «Guerre d'Hiver» contre la Finlande en 1939-40. Elles combattirent, il faut le souligner, dans des conditions extrêmement sévères d'hiver -- températures de -40 et des épaisseurs de neige de plus d'un mètre -- contre les fortifications et les installations enterrées, bien conçues et renforcées de la «Ligne Mannerheim» de la Finlande. En dépit de cela, on l'oublie souvent, l'Armée Rouge contraignit finalement les Finlandais à un humiliant armistice.

C'est toujours une erreur, souligne Suvorov, de sous-estimer son ennemi. Mais Hitler fit cette faute de calcul décisive. En 1943, après que le cours de la guerre ait tourné contre l'Allemagne, il reconnut son jugement erroné des forces soviétiques, deux années plus tôt.

Disparité des chars

Pour prouver que c'était Staline, et pas Hitler, qui était réellement préparé pour la guerre, Suvorov compare l'armement allemand et soviétique au milieu de 1941, avec une attention particulière pour les systèmes d'armes offensifs, d'importance décisive: les chars et les forces aéroportées. C'est un axiome généralement accepté en science militaire, que les forces attaquantes doivent avoir une supériorité numérique de trois contre un. Cependant, comme l'explique Suvorov, quand les Allemands frappèrent au matin du 22 juin 1941, ils attaquèrent avec un total de 3 350 chars, alors que les défenseurs soviétiques avaient un total de 24 000 chars -- ce qui veut dire que Staline avait sept fois plus de chars que Hitler, ou vingt et une fois plus de chars que ce qui aurait été considéré comme suffisant pour une défense adéquate. De plus, souligne Suvorov, les chars soviétiques étaient supérieurs dans tous les aspects techniques, incluant la puissance de feu, l'autonomie et le blindage.

Tel qu'il était, le développement soviétique de la production de chars lourds avait déjà commencé au début des années 30. Par exemple, dès 1933 les Soviétiques étaient déjà passés à la production en série, et livraient à leurs forces le modèle T-35, un char lourd de 45 tonnes avec 3 canons, 6 mitrailleuses, et 30mm de blindage. Par contre, les Allemands commencèrent le développement et la production d'un char de 45 tonnes comparable [ce furent le «Tiger» et le «Panther», NDT] seulement après que la guerre ait commencé à la mi-1941.

En 1939 les Soviétiques avaient déjà ajouté trois modèles de chars lourds à leur arsenal. De plus, les Soviétiques concevaient leurs chars avec de plus larges chenilles, et les équipaient avec des moteurs Diesel (qui étaient moins inflammables que ceux utilisant des carburateurs conventionnels). En outre, les chars soviétiques étaient construits avec le moteur et la direction à l'arrière, améliorant ainsi l'efficacité générale et la vision de l'équipage. Les chars allemands avaient une conception moins efficace, avec le moteur à l'arrière et la direction dans la partie avant.

Quand le conflit commença en juin 1941, montre Suvorov, l'Allemagne n'avait pas du tout de chars lourds, seulement 309 chars moyens, et juste 2 668 chars légers, inférieurs. Pour leur part, les Soviétiques au début de la guerre avaient à leur disposition des chars qui n'étaient pas seulement plus lourds mais de meilleure qualité.

A ce sujet, Suvorov cite les souvenirs du général allemand des blindés Heinz Guderian, qui écrivit dans ses mémoires Chef de Panzers (1952/1996, p. 143) :

Au printemps de 1941, Hitler avait spécialement ordonné qu'une commission militaire russe puisse visiter nos usines et nos écoles de blindés; dans cet ordre il avait insisté pour que rien ne leur soit caché. Les officiers russes en question refusèrent toujours de croire que le Panzer IV était en fait notre char le plus lourd. Ils dirent toujours que nous devions leur cacher nos nouveaux modèles, et se plaignirent en disant que nous n'appliquions pas l'ordre d'Hitler de tout leur montrer. La commission militaire insista tellement sur ce point que finalement nos responsables des services concernés conclurent: «Il semble que les Russes possèdent déjà des chars meilleurs et plus lourds que les nôtres». Ce fut à la fin de juillet 1941 que le T-34 apparut sur le front et l'énigme du nouveau modèle de char russe fut résolue.

Suvorov cite un autre fait révélateur extrait de l'Almanach de la 2ème Guerre Mondiale de Robert Goralski (1982, p. 164). Le 24 juin 1941, juste deux jours après le début de la guerre germano-soviétique:

Les Russes mirent en action leurs chars géants Klim Vorochilov près de Raseiniai [Lithanie]. Des modèles pesant 43 et 52 tonnes surprirent les Allemands, qui trouvèrent les KV presque inarrêtables. L'un de ces chars russes reçut 70 coups directs, mais aucun ne perça son blindage.

Bref, l'Allemagne attaqua le colosse soviétique avec des chars qui étaient trop légers, trop peu nombreux, et inférieurs en performances et en puissance de feu. Et cette disparité perdura pendant toute la guerre. Pendant le seule année 1942, les usines soviétiques produisirent 2 553 chars lourds, pendant que les Allemands en produisaient juste 89. Même à la fin de la guerre, le meilleur char au combat était le modèle soviétique IS («Iosif Staline»).

Suvorov encourage sarcastiquement les historiens militaires de l'establishment à étudier un livre sur les chars soviétiques, par Igor P. Schmelev, publié en 1993 par la «Hobby Book Publishing Company» à Moscou. Le travail d'un honnête analyste militaire amateur tel que Schmelev, qui est sincèrement intéressé et qui aime son travail et la vérité, dit Suvorov, est souvent supérieur à celui d'un employé payé par le gouvernement.

Disparité des Forces Aériennes

La supériorité soviétique en forces aéroportées était encore plus disproportionnée. Avant la guerre, les bombardiers soviétiques DB-3f et SB ainsi que les TB-1 et TB-3 (dont Staline possédait environ un millier) avaient été modifiés pour transporter aussi bien des parachutistes que des bombes. Vers la mi-1941, les Soviétiques avaient entraîné des centaines de milliers de parachutistes (Suvorov dit presque un million) en vue de l'attaque planifiée contre l'Allemagne et l'Occident. Ces troupes aéroportées devaient être déployées et lâchées derrière les lignes ennemies en plusieurs vagues, chaque vague étant formée de cinq corps d'armée aéroportés (VDKs), chaque corps comptant 10 419 hommes incluant un état-major et des services, une division d'artillerie, et un bataillon de chars autonome (50 chars). Suvorov donne la liste des commandants et des bases des deux premières vagues, ou dix corps. Les secondes et troisièmes vagues comportaient des troupes parlant français et espagnol.

Comme l'attaque allemande empêcha ces troupes hautement entraînées d'être utilisées comme prévu, Staline les convertit en «Divisions de la Garde», qu'il utilisa comme des réserves et des «pompiers» pour les situations d'urgence, tout comme Hitler utilisa souvent les unités de Waffen SS.

Cartes et manuels

Pour appuyer sa thèse principale, Suvorov cite des données supplémentaires qui n'étaient pas mentionnées dans ses deux premiers ouvrages sur ce sujet. Premièrement, à la veille du début de la guerre de 1941, les forces soviétiques avaient reçu des cartes topographiques seulement pour les zones de la frontière et pour l'Europe; elles ne reçurent pas de cartes du territoire ou des villes soviétiques, parce que la guerre ne devait pas être menée sur le territoire national. Le Chef du Service Topographique militaire de l'époque, et donc responsable de la distribution des cartes militaires, le major-général Kudryatsev, ne fut pas sanctionné ni même limogé pour avoir manqué à fournir des cartes du territoire national, mais continua à mener une longue et brillante carrière militaire. De même, le Chef d'Etat-major, le général Joukov, ne fut jamais tenu pour responsable de la débâcle des premiers mois de la guerre. Aucun des principaux commandants militaires ne pouvait être tenu pour responsable, souligne Suvorov, parce qu'ils avaient tous suivi à la lettre les ordres de Staline.

Deuxièmement, au début de juin 1941, les forces soviétiques reçurent des milliers d'exemplaires d'un manuel russo-allemand, avec des sections consacrées à des opérations militaires offensives, telles que s'emparer de gares de chemin de fer, orienter des parachutistes, et ainsi de suite, et des expressions [en langues étrangères] utiles comme «arrêtez de transmettre ou je tire». Ce manuel fut imprimé en grand nombre par les imprimeries militaires de Léningrad et de Moscou. Cependant, ils n'atteignirent jamais les troupes sur les lignes de front, et on dit qu'elles furent détruites pendant la phase du début de la guerre.

L'aide des Etats-Unis «neutres»

Comme le note Suvorov, les Etats-Unis avaient fourni du matériel militaire depuis les années 30. Il cite l'étude de A.C. Sutton, National Suicide (Arlington House, 1973), qui relate qu'en 1938 le président Roosevelt conclut un accord secret avec l'URSS pour échanger des informations militaires. Pour le public américain, cependant, Roosevelt annonça la mise en place d'un «embargo moral» contre la Russie soviétique.

Pendant les mois précédent l'entrée en guerre formelle de l'Amérique dans la guerre (décembre 1941), les navires de guerre des Etats-Unis, officiellement neutres, étaient déjà en guerre dans l'Atlantique contre les forces navales allemandes (Voir La Flotte de Mr Roosevelt: la guerre privée de la Flotte US de l'Atlantique, 1939-42 par Patrick Abbazia [Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1975] ). Et deux jours après le déclenchement de «Barbarossa», Roosevelt annonça une aide des Etats-Unis à la Russie Soviétique dans sa guerre de survie contre l'Axe. Ainsi, au début de l'opération «Barbarossa», Hitler écrivit une lettre à Mussolini: «En ce moment cela ne fait aucune différence si l'Amérique entre officiellement en guerre ou pas, elle soutient déjà nos ennemis à fond, avec des livraisons massives de matériel de guerre.»

De même, W. Churchill faisait tout ce qui était en son pouvoir pendant les mois précédent juin 1941 -- alors que les forces britanniques subissaient défaite sur défaite -- pour faire entrer à la fois les Etats-Unis et l'URSS dans la guerre du côté britannique. En vérité, la coalition anti-Hitler des «Trois Grands» (Staline, Roosevelt, Churchill) était effectivement en place avant que l'Allemagne attaque la Russie, et fut une raison majeure pour que Hitler se sentit obligé de frapper la Russie soviétique, et de déclarer la guerre aux Etats-Unis cinq mois plus tard. (Voir le discours d'Hitler du 11 décembre 1941, publié dans le Journal of Historical Review, hiver 1988-89, p. 394-396, 402-412)

Les raisons de l'appui de F. Roosevelt à Staline sont difficiles à établir. Le président Roosevelt lui-même expliqua un jour à William Bullitt, son premier ambassadeur en Russie soviétique: «Je pense que si je lui donne [à Staline] tout ce que je peux, et que je ne demande rien en retour, noblesse oblige, il ne tentera pas d'annexer quoi que ce soit, et travaillera avec moi pour un monde de paix et de démocratie.» (Cité dans Robert Nisbet, Roosevelt et Staline: l'idylle manquée, 1989, p. 6). Peut-être l'explication la plus exacte (et la plus gentille) de l'attitude de Roosevelt est-elle une ignorance profonde, une auto-intoxication ou de la naïveté. Selon l'opinion digne de considération de George Kennan, historien et ancien diplomate américain de haut rang, en politique étrangère Roosevelt était «un homme superficiel, ignorant, dilettante, avec un horizon intellectuel sévèrement limité.»

Un pari désespéré

Suvorov admet être fasciné par Staline, l'appelant «un animal, un monstre sauvage et sanglant, mais un génie de tous les temps et de tous les peuples». Il dirigea la plus grande puissance militaire de la 2ème Guerre Mondiale, la force qui, plus que toute autre, vainquit l'Allemagne. En particulier, dans les années finales du conflit, il domina l'alliance militaire des Alliés. Il dut considérer Roosevelt et Churchill avec mépris, comme des «idiots utiles».

Au début de 1941, chacun admettait que comme l'Allemagne était déjà engagée contre la Grande-Bretagne en Afrique du Nord, en Méditerranée, et dans l'Atlantique, Hitler ne pourrait jamais se permettre l'ouverture d'un second front à l'Est (se rappelant la désastreuse expérience de la 1ère Guerre Mondiale, il avait mis en garde dans Mein Kampf contre le danger mortel d'une guerre sur deux fronts). C'est précisément parce qu'il était sûr que Staline pensait que Hitler n'ouvrirait pas un second front, soutient Suvorov, que le dirigeant allemand se sentit libre de déclencher «Barbarossa». Cette attaque, insiste Suvorov, fut un pari énorme et désespéré. Mais menacé par des forces soviétiques supérieures, prêtes à submerger l'Allemagne et l'Europe, Hitler n'avait guère d'autre choix que de déclencher cette attaque préventive. [Toutes proportions gardées, on peut faire une intéressante comparaison avec l'attaque israélienne de la Guerre des Six Jours en 1967. Dans ce dernier cas, le caractère préventif de l'attaque est admis sans difficulté par les historiens «officiels», alors que dans le cas de «Barbarossa», il est «politiquement incorrect» de le reconnaître, malgré l'évidence de l'immense menace soviétique, imminente ou pas, NDT.]

Reichstag, 1945

Mais c'était trop peu, trop tard. En dépit de l'avantage de frapper le premier, ce furent les Soviétiques qui finalement l'emportèrent. Au printemps de 1945, les troupes de l'Armée Rouge réussirent à hisser le drapeau rouge sur le bâtiment du Reichstag à Berlin. C'est seulement grâce aux sacrifices des forces allemandes et des forces de l'Axe que les troupes soviétiques ne parvinrent pas à hisser le drapeau rouge sur Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhague, Rome, Stockholm, et peut-être, Londres.

Le débat devient plus âpre

En dépit de la résistance des historiens de «l'establishment» (qui en Russie sont souvent d'anciens communistes), l'appui à la thèse de «l'attaque préventive» de Suvorov est allé croissant, à la fois en Russie et en Europe de l'Ouest. Parmi ceux qui sympathisent avec les vues de Suvorov figurent de jeunes historiens russes comme Yuri L. Dyakov, Tatiana S. Bushuyeva, et I. Pavlova (voir le JHR, nov-déc. 1997, p. 32-34).

Concernant l'histoire du 20ème siècle, les historiens américains ont généralement l'esprit plus fermé que leurs collègues d'Europe et de Russie. Mais même aux Etats-Unis, il y a eu quelques voix pour appuyer la thèse de la «guerre préventive» -- ce qui est du plus haut intérêt, sachant que les livres de Suvorov sur la 2ème Guerre Mondiale, à l'exception du «Brise-glace», n'ont pas été traduits en anglais (l'une de ces voix est celle de l'historien Russell Stolfi, professeur d'Histoire Européenne Moderne à la Naval Postgraduate School à Monterey, Californie. Voir le compte-rendu de son livre Hitler's Panzer East dans le JHR de nov-déc. 1995).

Toutes les réactions au travail de Suvorov n'ont pas été positives, cependant. Il a aussi provoqué des critiques et des répétitions des thèses officielles vieilles de plusieurs décennies. Parmi les nouveaux défenseurs les plus représentatifs de la ligne «orthodoxe», figurent les historiens Gabriel Gorodetsky de l'Université de Tel-Aviv, et John Ericson de l'Université d'Edinburgh.

Rejetant tous les arguments qui pourraient justifier l'attaque allemande, Gorodetsky en particulier critique et ridiculise les travaux de Suvorov, spécialement dans un livre proprement intitulé «Le Mythe du Brise-glace». En fait, Gorodetsky (et Ericson) attribue les pertes soviétiques à la supposée impréparation de l'Armée Rouge pour la guerre. «Il est absurde», écrit Gorodetsky, «de prétendre que Staline aurait jamais conçu l'idée d'attaquer l'Allemagne, comme quelques historiens allemands aiment aujourd'hui à le suggérer, pour pouvoir au moyen d'une attaque-surprise, désorganiser l'attaque préventive planifiée par l'Allemagne.»

Il n'est pas surprenant que Gorodetsky ait reçu l'éloge des autorités du Kremlin et des chefs militaires russes. De même, «l'establishment» allemand soutient l'historien israélien. Aux frais des contribuables allemands, Gorodetsky a travaillé et enseigné au Service de Recherche d'Histoire Militaire (MGFA) allemand, semi-officiel, qui a publié en avril 1991 le livre de Gorodetsky, Zwei Wege nach Moskau (Deux chemins pour Moscou).

Dans la «Dernière République», Suvorov répond à Gorodetsky et aux autres critiques de ses deux premiers livres sur l'histoire de la 2ème Guerre Mondiale. Il est particulièrement cinglant dans ses critiques du travail de Gorodetsky, spécialement le «Mythe du Brise-glace».

Quelques critiques

Suvorov écrit de manière caustique, sarcastique, et avec une grande acidité. Mais s'il a raison sur le fond, comme le pense l'auteur de cet article, il a -- et nous aussi -- parfaitement le droit d'être acerbe, ayant été trompé et désinformé pendant des décennies.

Bien que Suvorov mérite notre gratitude pour son importante dissection d'une légende historique, son travail n'est pas sans défauts. D'une part, son éloge des réalisations du complexe militaro-industriel soviétique, et de la qualité des armements et de l'équipement militaire soviétique est exagéré, voire dithyrambique. Il omet de signaler l'origine occidentale d'une grande partie de l'armement et du matériel soviétique. Les ingénieurs soviétiques ont eu un talent particulier pour modifier avec succès, simplifier, et souvent améliorer les modèles et les conceptions occidentaux. Par exemple, le robuste moteur Diesel utilisé par les chars soviétiques était basé sur un moteur d'avion allemand de BMW.

Une critique qui ne peut pas décemment être faite à Suvorov serait son manque de patriotisme. Se rappelant que les premières victimes du communisme furent les Russes, il fait à juste titre une nette distinction entre le peuple russe et le régime communiste qui le dominait. Il n'écrit pas seulement avec la compétence d'un historien capable, mais en mémoire des millions de Russes dont les vies furent gaspillées pour les plans malsains de «révolution mondiale» de Lénine et de Staline.

Journal of Historical Review, 17/4 (Juillet-Août 1998), 30-37. Daniel W. Michaels est diplômé de l'Université de Columbia (Phi Beta Kappa, 1954), étudiant dans le cadre du programme Fulbright en Allemagne (1957), et récemment retraité du Ministère américain de la Défense après 40 ans de service.