The End of Silence:The Final Report and the Democratic Future of Romania (In Memoriam Vaclav Havel)
I am dedicating this article to the memory of Vaclav Havel (1936-2011) critical intellectual, anti-communist dissident, founder of Charter ’77, playwright, president of post-communist Czechoslovakia, then president of the Czech Republic, author of the timeless essay “The Power of the Powerless”. Together with Pope John Paul II, Andrei Sakharov, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vaclav Havel symbolised what I called the reinventing of politics - the courage to defy revolutionary Machiavellism and to reaffirm the rights of subjectivity in a world dominated by obtuse bureaucracies and totalizing ideologies. To Havel, co-author of the Declaration of Prague, speaking the truth about communism as well as fascism was an explicit imperative. Vaclav Havel’s death fills with grief the community of those who believe that human rights are universal and non-negociable, that the crimes against humanity are exempt from prescription.
Here it is a fragment from my 1998 book “Fantasies of Salvation”, published by Princeton University Press:
After all, why did so many Westerners get excited at the moment of the anti-authoritarian revolutions of 1989? Simply because a cohort of senile bureaucrats were kicked out of power? The answer is surely more profound, and it is linked to the fact that the revolutions of Eastern Europe have rehabilitated the notion of citizen as the true political subject. Their main liberal component consisted in the emphasis on the right of the individual to be free from state intrusion into his or her life. This celebration of negative liberty was accompanied by an equally important focus on the revival of civic initiative and the restoration of substantive freedoms, especially the freedom of association and expression. The uprisings were the palpable expression of a need to reinvent politics, to insert values that transcend immediate pragmatic and ideological considerations into real life. Vaclav Havel’s presence in the Prague Castle is a symbol greater than his physical person enjoying (or abhorring) the presidential prerogatives. It is indeed miraculous that, out of the lowest levels of human destitution, out of the murky world of decaying Leninism, an experience of solidarity and civic fraternity could be restored. This is the deeper meaning of Havel’s famous pledge in his presidential address on January 1, 1990: ‘I do not think you appointed me to this office for me, of all people, to lie to you.’
A successor of Masaryk, the president-philosopher, Havel was not afraid to speak openly and resiliently searched for the truth. A follower of Capek and Hasek, he forged forward onto his path with melancholic humour. A descendant of Kafka, he felt and saw the absurd before many others did. Just like Malraux, he could hear the voices of the silent. Kundera left for the West, Havel stayed. He was neither silent, nor willing to obey communist rules. In his essay “Anatomy of a Reticence”, which I discussed in details in my book “The Poverty of Utopia” (Routledge, 1988), Havel sharply criticised the illusions of Western pacifists and New-Leftists during the 1980s. The latter, under the umbrella of institutions such as “European Nuclear Disarmament” (END), believed that only the American missiles on the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany were “aggressive”, while the Soviet ones were by definition benign. Havel reminded them (but, did they want to know? Did they want to hear?) that the last military invasion in Europe had taken place in Czechoslovakia, in 1968. When some people talk about the neo-conservative paradigm, which they demonise as a sort of “neo-imperialism”, they forget that throughout those years, the Left, be it German, English or French, indulged itself in the myth of moral equivalence between the two super-powers. Eastern dissidents, among prominently Havel, deconstructed this ideology and exposed its mythical and defeatist substratum.
Havel examined major political themes by means of ideas and metaphysical implications. He was not a professional philosopher, but an independent thinker inspired by the ideas of Edmund Husserl and by his disciple, Jan Patocka. He was a relentless seeker of authenticity, experienced in the light of honour, risk, and sacrifice, not as hedonism. When he wrote the famous “Open Letter to Dr. Husák” he knew very well how this quisling of Czechoslovakia will react, anticipating the latter’s fury. He proudly and courageously took on the duty to denounce the humiliating Pax Sovietica, which in his country took the form of a debasing “normalisation”. There are only few other examples which illustrate as beautiful and impressive the unity between thought and life. In Karl Jaspers’ words, Vaclav Havel was one of those people to whom our understanding of humanness measured up.
The condemnation of communist dictatorship in Romania, a regime guilty of countless crimes against humanity, did happen suddenly. During the bloody December of 1989, the protesters in Timişoara, Cluj, Sibiu, Bucharest, Iaşi, Braşov and other towns called for the end of this regime. They did not support the humanisation of state socialism, but its abolishment. The post-communist governments that followed did their best to eschew the issue, firstly under the president of amnesia, Ion Iliescu, then under that of procrastination, Emil Constantinescu. The latter issued nicely phrased statements, but did not go before the Parliament to face the hysterical reactions of those who regret the national-dictatorial regime (former and contemporary protochronists, demagogues, scoundrels, and tricksters). He did not utter the essential words: “I condemn the communist dictatorship in Romanian as illegitimate and criminal”. Earlier, the trail had been blazed by the Memorial of Sighet, an initiative of two extraordinary people, Ana Blandiana and Romulus Rusan. The Summer School of Sighet takes place every year, the International Research Centre with the Civic Academy produces excellent research. Also, the Memorial of the Revolution was founded in Timişoara through the efforts of Traian Orban. Books, memoirs and volumes of documents had been published, but the Romanian authorities kept silent. Silence, however, as we know from a well-known German thinker, Gesine Schwann, has destructive effects.
In 2004, Ion Iliescu (who had made a terrible blunder in 2003 on the subject of the Holocaust within his interview for the “Haaretz”) accepted the conclusions of the Elie Wiesel Commission’s Report and condemned the Holocaust in Romania. Romanian civil society asked president Traian Băsescu to commit himself to condemning the totalitarian regime of Bolshevik influence from 6 March 1945, when Petru Groza’s puppet government was set up, until the Revolution of December 1989. Moreover, the Appeal launched by Sorin Ilieşiu in 2005 requested that the crimes which took place after 22 December be condemned as well. This campaign gained the necessary weight exerting immense pressure on the representatives of the Romanian political class. The result was the creation, in April 2006, of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania. Traian Băsescu’s merits in starting and supporting this project are indisputable. The President showed both political will and consistency of principles. In June 2006, during a meeting between the members and the experts of the Presidential Commision to which well-known representatives of the mass-media were present (Emil Hurezeanu, Ioan T. Morar, or Mircea Mihăieş), President Băsescu was as firm as possible when referring to the increasing attacks against the Commission: “Even if, at the end of it all, there will be only Mr. Tismăneanu and me left, I will still condemn the communist regime”. We did not remain alone. We benefited from the support of civil society, numerous intellectuals along with the silent majority that found various forms to express its solidarity.
The reasons for the creation of the Commission came from within. There was no external pressure on the part of the European Union, as sometimes stated even in very well-documented Western scholarly literature. It was an unprecedented initiative, not just for Romania, but for all post-communist countries as well. The Eppelmann Commission had been set up in Germany, but the Democratic Republic of Germany did no longer exist. The activity of the Commission and the President’s condemnation speech should be compared with similar events, such as Jacques Chirac’s condemnation, in 1995, of the Vichy Regime on behalf of the French state. This form of state apology is a vital step on the path of coming to terms with the traumatic past by acknowledging the crimes which were committed and the illegitimacy of the dictatorial regime. The mandate of the Commission focused predominantly on the institutions, methods, and personalities that made possible the lawless actions of the communist regime. A group of young historians, political scientists, philosophers, and sociologists started, with enthusiasm and proficiency, the work on the Report. My role, as president of the Commission, and of its members was to co-ordinate the work of the experts and to communicate with the head of state particularly on matters of facilitating archival access. When I hear people say that these researchers were too young, that they could not understand the terrible times they were researching, I remember Corneille’s Le Cid: Je suis jeune, il est vrai, mais aux âmes bien nées/ La valeur n’attend point le nombre des années.
We all contributed to the writing of the Final Report. The text was extensively discussed and debated. I thought it was necessary, both from a historiographic and a moral point of view, to include the communist repression in the Romanian territories annexed by the USSR in 1940. Since these crimes influenced the destinies of all Romanian citizens, the Report was supposed to comprise the history of minorities during repression. The victims’ point of view was represented in the Report (the chapter was written by Mr. Gheorghe Boldur-Lăţescu and experts associated with the AFDPR). A valuable research team was made up and it succeeded in maintaining its solidarity despite extensive calumny and insults. Even the most difficult moments were surpassed easily enough and no threats were posed to the unity of the team. We all knew from the experiences of similar commissions in post-dictatorial states such as Argentina, Chile, South Africa, and Germany, that naming the guilty would be a very difficult task. We did not hesitate. The Report includes a list of the biographies of former high rank officials (among whom Ion Iliescu) responsible for the functioning of the communist regime from 1945 until 1989. The violent reaction of former president, Ion Iliescu, came as no surprise. Based on hundreds of documents and thousands of testimonies, the Securitate was described as a criminal organisation. We were not surprised to see the hysteria of former officers and their loud speakers, including a daily specialised in promoting former officials, including former heads of the Securitate.
The Final Report, entitled this way because it concluded the work of the Commission (the Wiesel Commission adopted a similar title for its Report), is a collective work, endorsed by all the members of the Presidential Commission from the point of view of both its content and method. I take this opportunity to honour the memory of three members of the Commission who are no longer with us: Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu, Virgil Ierunca and Monica Lovinescu.
As I said it before, a democracy without memory is weak, vulnerable, and precarious. The democratic future of Romania is connected with an open, lucid, and honest coming to terms with the dictatorial past. The latter must be faced and acknowledged, not romanced, beautified, or mystified.