Maya BoyleJeremy KingThe Other Europe Since Stalin

I N T E G R I T Y O F “ O T H E R ” C O N S C I E N C E I N A N “ O T H E R ” C I V I L S O C I E T Y

A theory of dissent is not only significant for an academic literature inves-

tigating civic participation, but also for a conceptualisation of the nature of

political power. Eastern European post-Stalin critical intellectuals developed

a theory of dissent that largely exists beyond the analysis of Socialist sys-

tems. Within this theory, their conceptualised role of civil society has been

strongly impacted by their theories. Unlike contemporary American political

thought, which conceptualises civil society as a product of itself, a constitu-

tional democracy whose legitimacy is older than the memory of any living

person, Eastern European political thought was, despite their best efforts to

the contrary, a product of its otherness, not a product of its pure self. Inde-

pendent of its validity the post-Stalin political experiment was anathema to

the rest of the developed world. Vaclav Havel’s vision of politics in The

Power of the Powerless offers hope to the hopeless in his argument, insofar

as no matter how entrenched rulers seem to be, they are vulnerable to so-

called “powerless” citizens who are in fact not powerless when they refuse to

surrender their consciences. However, in the face of political realism, Eastern

European dissidents could rest in the assurances of their global conventional-

ity. Ultimately, the integrity of the otherness of a dissident civil society is

compromised, because by deviating from the otherness of the regime, they

in part fall in line with convention.

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Havel’s essay begins with a nod to the Western conceptualisation of civil

society. “A spectre is haunting Eastern Europe,” he writes. “The spectre of

what in the West is called dissent.1” This opening statement offers an appeal

to Western legitimacy by framing his dissident reassurance in the terms of

the dominant global culture, further highlighting the otherness of post-Stalin

Eastern Europe. By so doing, Havel also aligns dissidents’ goals with those

of the West, which annihilates any conceptualised otherness within an un-

conventional political system.

Within his description of the nature of the Soviet bloc, Havel again defines

its concrete facets in Western terms. He notes that “the hierarchy of values

existing in the developed countries of the West has, in essence, appeared in

our society…in other words, what we have here is simply another form of the

consumer and industrial society, with all its concomitant social, intellectual,

and psychological consequences.2” The difference, Havel concludes, is in the

nature of power. By delineating the similarities between the West and the

Soviet bloc, yet defining the starkest difference as that of the composition of

power, he offers the Soviet regime as an opportunity to critique the nature of

legitimacy as a function of power. The post-totalitarian system he frames

likewise paints the Soviet bloc as the bête noire of democracy. His stark jux-

taposition against the nature of familiar Western power thus conceptually

disadvantages the Soviet bloc’s political ideals, calling its legitimacy into 1 Havel, Vaclav. The Power of the Powerless (Routledge Revivals): Citizens Against the State in Central-eastern Europe. Routledge, 2009. page 232 Havel, Vaclav. The Power of the Powerless (Routledge Revivals): Citizens Against the State in Central-eastern Europe. Routledge, 2009. page 26

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question. By so doing, Havel frames the Soviet nature of power as anathema

to Western political ideals, breeding distrust and sympathy for dissenters.

Havel laces his critique of the nature of Soviet power by lashing the effi-

cacy and legitimacy of the executors themselves. He writes that “Western

Sovietologists often exaggerate the role of individuals in the post-totalitarian

system and overlook the fact that the ruling figures, despite the immense

power they possess, are often no more than blind executors of…laws they

themselves never can, and never do, reflect upon.3” Whereas Western politi-

cal power is fundamentally derived from the consent of its citizens, and itself

is a uniquely human instrument, with government professing to represent

constituent interests, Havel portrays the Soviet bloc as an inhuman automa-

ton, intent on suffocating free will through its impression of a “ritually anony-

mous mask4” because ultimately, in a post-totalitarian state, the enormous

inertia of automatism supersedes individual will.

Havel concludes his relation of the Soviet bloc to the Western one by

couching them in terms of the “historical counter between dictatorship and

consumer society.5” He refers to his Europe as a “warning to the West, re-

vealing to it its own latent tendencies,” in which citizens’ “adaptability to liv-

ing a lie” and sacrifice of “spiritual and moral integrity” when faced with the

3 Havel, Vaclav. The Power of the Powerless (Routledge Revivals): Citizens Against the State in Central-eastern Europe. Routledge, 2009.. page 344 Havel, Vaclav. The Power of the Powerless (Routledge Revivals): Citizens Against the State in Central-eastern Europe. Routledge, 2009.page 345 Havel, Vaclav. The Power of the Powerless (Routledge Revivals): Citizens Against the State in Central-eastern Europe. Routledge, 2009. page 39

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“trivialising temptations” of consumerism are profoundly connected with the

“effortless spread of social auto-totality.6” Havel's Soviet bloc thus stands as

everything that the West must fear, insofar as it is a testament to the most

insidious facets of Western civil society harnessing the apathy and inertia of

its own liberal-minded citizens to pervert a democratic state.

Given Havel’s profound otherisation of the Soviet bloc, it logically follows

that the Soviet dissidents—others themselves—would in fact exist within the

Western ideological framework. However, Havel does not harness this logi-

cal train. In fact, he fabricates a dual legitimacy for dissident work in the So-

viet periphery, framing the work as “other” and simultaneously likening the

dissidents themselves to Gandhi-esque figures, forging a democratic path in

an autocratic society. However, the stark fallacy of this comparison lies in

the nature of global political and civil society at the time. Whereas Gandhi

and his acolytes forged a respect for human rights in a world where conven-

tion did not dictate the fundamental human rights of colonists, and coloured

colonists at that, Havel’s Soviet dissidents demanded their rights amidst an

unfriendly immediate civil society but with the knowledge that they were ad-

vocating for long-approved political ideals that closely aligned with Western

convention.

Within the conceptualisation of political realism, by allowing dissidents to

rest their ideals in both convention and otherness, Havel creates a powerful

yet false dual legitimacy for Soviet dissent. Kautilya’s Arthashastra high-6 ibid.

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lights the impossibility of a dually legitimate consciousness, insofar as those

who act in anathema to the anathema itself ultimately serve the purposes of

alliance with convention. “The king” he writes, “who is situated anywhere

immediately on the circumference of the conqueror's territory is termed the

enemy. The king who is likewise situated close to the enemy, but separated

from the conqueror only by the enemy, is termed the friend (of the con-

queror).7” As such, Soviet dissidents cannot exist with the compounded sat-

isfaction of acting in the interest of democracy and believing that they are

alone in this fight. In fact, one would think the lack of solidarity singularly

disturbing, considering the lack of support from the West.

Havel defines “opposition” in accordance with the Czechoslovak Charter

77, as “everything that manages to avoid total manipulation and which

therefore denies the principle that the system has an absolute claim on the

individual.8” He considers the Charter 77 signatories to view opposition

through a traditionally Western lens, insofar as they define it as an “alterna-

tive political programme whose proponents are prepared to accept direct po-

litical responsibility for it.9”

The fact that Havel defines power, opposition and dissent, and the

broader basis of his political conceptual framework in Western terms, yet

does not recognise the solidarity that dissidents should have with the West, 7 Kautilya "Arthasastra" translated by R. Shamasastry, Third Edition, Weslyan Mission Press 1929 Mysore, p. 296.8 Havel, Vaclav. The Power of the Powerless (Routledge Revivals): Citizens Against the State in Central-eastern Europe. Routledge, 2009.page 55.9 ibid.

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provides a framework for dissidents to understand their righteous otherness

in their immediate civil society, but allows that they cling to this otherness

despite their alliance with a broader political ideology, culture, and conven-

tion. In so doing, Havel compromises the integrity of dissidents’ otherness,

for he places his “powerless” dissidents in a third space between convention-

ality and opposition. Where this space does provide dissidents with a moral

righteousness in their perceived attempts at political revolution, this third

space somewhat devalues the dissidents’ goal because it does not recognise

the conventions to which it adheres, which, at the risk of delegitimising the

individuality of the opposition, would allow for a sound backing by the West.

In a post-totalitarian system, Havel writes, “truth in the widest sense of

the word has a very special import, one unknown in other contexts…as an

outright political force.10” A socialist state seeks to control fundamental

truths. As Verdery notes in her Soviet critique, “What Was Socialism and

Why Did It Fall?,” the socialist paternalism of the post-Stalinist Soviet bloc

compounded with the central motive surrounding the accumulation of re-

sources instead of the accumulation of profits leads to profound discrepan-

cies of truth both within the post-Stalin Soviet regime and between the citi-

zens as a product of this government.

10 Havel, Vaclav. The Power of the Powerless (Routledge Revivals): Citizens Against the State in Central-eastern Europe. Routledge, 2009. page 40

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Socialism is inherently problematic, Verdery writes, because it seeks to

distil and alter facets of the truth beyond their purest forms.11 Necessity and

time, and framing both as a product of the state instead of a product of con-

sumption and itself, respectively, is inherently problematic, because regard-

less of propaganda, a foundational need is acutely felt.12 The need for shel-

ter and nourishment exists independently of a leader’s reassurance.

This poorly substantiated lie to which Verdery attests becomes deeply ap-

parent in citizens’ endemic distrust of the state. She notes how the socialist

system of centralised planning centred around the meeting of certain pro-

duction targets, hinged around the state’s need to accumulate resources.

However, due to the nature of socialism as a means to slowing time instead

of speeding it up, these targets became increasingly difficult to reach, given

that resources often did not meet the expected time constraint. Managers

would thus seek to subvert the system by asking for more than they needed

with the hopes of actually possessing what they required in time. This

process lead to both hoarding and shortages. Verdery points to how this dif-

fers from capitalism because in capitalism a seller tries to appease the cus-

tomer while in socialism a manager tries to procure resources.

This post-totalitarian lie, it would seem, provides a strong foundation for

the legitimacy of revolution. However, Havel seeks to strengthen the legiti-

macy even further by compounding the legitimacy of dissent with the novel 11 Verdery, Katherine. What was socialism, and what comes next?. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.12 ibid.

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valour of the pursuit of truth. However, this ‘unique’ truth—acknowledging

the fallacies in any given state—is poorly conceived, given that it has already

been found by much of the Western world. Havel’s “power of the power-

less,” the integrity of a dissident conscience, is weakened in this sense be-

cause it does not acknowledge the pre-existing truth endemic to democracy,

but sees this type of dissent, although couched in Western terms, as a prod-

uct of a post-totalitarian state.

Havel validates revolution by framing it as an attempt to live outside the

Soviet lie.13 “Living within the lie [of a post-totalitarian state],” he writes,

“can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace

and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can

coexist with living within the truth, and therefor everyone who steps out of

line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety [emphasis

Havel’s].14” Havel substantiates this nature of Soviet truth by noting that ap-

pearances may be perceived as reality so long as they are not confronted

with reality’s true state.

The integrity of conscience as a means of preserving power within an au-

thoritarian state resonates in many dissident factions, ranging from whistle-

blowers to civil rights leaders. However, this power exists only when wielded

amidst a global society which has yet to recognise the truth of the dissidents

13 Havel, Vaclav. The Power of the Powerless (Routledge Revivals): Citizens Against the State in Central-eastern Europe. Routledge, 2009. page 3914 Havel, Vaclav. The Power of the Powerless (Routledge Revivals): Citizens Against the State in Central-eastern Europe. Routledge, 2009. page 40

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themselves, for they must operate on the knowledge of a universal right, not

a given practice. Havel’s appeal to dissenters’ integrity is a compelling plea,

but one that ultimately fails, as it does not acknowledge the comparative

ease of otherising a regime which already exists as an “other” within the

broader global context, regardless of its immediate difficulty. Havel’s revolu-

tionaries opposed an oppressive state, but they did so with an existing vali-

dation for their actions given the global distrust and quasi-exile to which the

post-Stalin Soviet bloc was subjected. Havel notes that “if living within the

truth in the post-totalitarian system becomes the chief breeding ground for

independent, alternative political ideas, then all considerations about the na-

ture and future prospects of these ideas must necessarily reflect this moral

dimension as a political phenomenon.15” However, given the conceptual de-

pendency and conventionality of revolution on Western ideals of political cul-

ture, Havel himself constructed a new lie of valorised novelty through which,

instead of offering a space for truth to flourish, supplanted the coercive So-

viet lie with a grassroots, self-sustaining form.

15 Havel, Vaclav. The Power of the Powerless (Routledge Revivals): Citizens Against the State in Central-eastern Europe. Routledge, 2009. page 45.

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