Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

Ostpolitik was totally misconceived? Perhaps they believed that
these parties could change from within, but they were certainly not
fellow travellers. Moreover, they wanted to have a dialogue on the
armaments race, which was very threatening in the 1980s. And
they hoped that the Helsinki agreements would create space for
the opposition. Were they totally wrong by trying to find an opening
for dialogue, instead of fuelling the confrontation like Thatcher and
Reagan did?
The Helsinki accords definitely had a very positive effect because
all sorts of underground committees started to take human rights
very seriously. People in Eastern Europe had never heard of human
rights. I think that did give them some hope. But I don’t think American
opposition to Soviet communism was just an image, an empty
shell. The US was the chief opponent of the Soviet Union. The US
was seen as limiting the power of the Soviet Union. Many in Central
Europe believed, to put it simply, they would be all dead without
the United States. That is part of the background to the
pro-Americanism of many Central Europeans. Another important
element was the fact that they had millions of relatives in the United
Sates, especially the Poles. They knew jolly well that their uncle in
Chicago sent 10,000 dollars a year and drove a car. They had pictures
of the houses they were living in, their standard of living. In the
1960s and 1970s the contrast was enormous. While communist
propaganda promoted the idea of the prosperous socialist society,
it was obvious to everyone that image was false. That was a big element
of pro American feeling. I am not the greatest admirer of the
US, but in Eastern Europe it remains very difficult to criticise the
US, or aspects of its policies.
Q: Why did the system collapse? Because of the outside pressure,
or the armaments race?
It collapsed because it was brain dead. I usually liken it to a dinosaur
that had a heart attack and died on its feet. Nobody attacked
it. Few would have believed that the KGB in 1991 wouldn’t be able
to mend a coup against Gorbachev and save the Soviet Union. But
they had just forgotten how to do things. Gorbachev himself was
totally unaware of reality. He wanted to save the Soviet Union, but
he had no clue how it worked. The whole system just collapsed
under its own weight. The regimes gradually lost faith in what they
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