Repression and resistance in Communist Europe

182 Pages·2003·2.471 MB·English

by  Sharman, Jason Campbell

Repression and Resistance in
Communist Europe
How governments stay in power without the consent of the governed is
fundamental to the study of politics. This book explores the relationship
between the citizens and regimes of Communist Europe, looking in detail
at Soviet collectivization in 1928–1934, the Hungarian Uprising of 1956
and the Polish Solidarity Movement of 1980–1984. It shows how the
system denied resources necessary for popular grievances to be translated
into collective opposition and how this lessened the amount of popular
protest, affected the nature of such protest as did occur and entrenched
the dominance of state over society.
J.C. Sharman is a Lecturer in Government and International Relations at
the University of Sydney, working in the area of Communist-era politics as
well as the political impact of economic reforms in post-Communist
candidates for European Union accession.
BASEES/RoutledgeCurzon Series on Russian and East
European Studies
Series editor:
Richard Sakwa, Department of Politics and International Relations,
University of Kent
Editorial committee:
George Blazyca, Centre for Contemporary European Studies, University
of Paisley
Terry Cox, Department of Government, University of Strathclyde
Rosalind Marsh, Department of European Studies and Modern Lan-
guages, University of Bath
David Moon, Department of History, University of Strathclyde
Hilary Pilkington, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, Univer-
sity of Birmingham
Stephen White, Department of Politics, University of Glasgow
This series is published on behalf of BASEES (the British Association for
Slavonic and East European Studies). The series comprises original, high-
quality, research-level work by both new and established scholars on all
aspects of Russian, Soviet, post-Soviet and East European Studies in hum-
manities and social science subjects.
1. Ukraine’s Foreign and Security Policy, 1991–2000
Roman Wolczuk
2. Political Parties in the Russian Regions
Derek S. Hutcheson
3. Local Communities and Post-Communist Transformation
Edited by Simon Smith
4. Repression and Resistance in Communist Europe
J.C. Sharman
Repression and Resistance
in Communist Europe
J.C. Sharman
To my family and Bilyana
First published 2003
by RoutledgeCurzon
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by RoutledgeCurzon
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2003 J.C. Sharman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Sharman, J.C. (Jason Campbell), 1973–
Repression and resistance in Communist Europe / J.C. Sharman
p. cm. – (BASEES/RoutledgeCurzon series on Russian and
East European studies ; 4)
Published simultaneously in the USA and Canada.
Includes bibliographical references and index
1. Communism–Europe, Eastern–History. 2. Europe,
Eastern–Politics and government–1945–1989. 3.Hungary–
History–Revolution, 1956. 4.NSZZ “Solidarnoââ” (Labor
organization) 5. Poland–Politics and government–1980–1989.
I.Title. II.Series.
HX240.7.A6S53 2003
323'.044'09470904–dc21
200340932
ISBN 0-203-43890-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-34066-3 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0–415–30669–8(Print Edition)
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1 Introduction 1
The state of the field: social contract, social movements,
totalitarianism and hegemony 3
The methodology: historical–sociological comparison 5
The cases: Soviet collectivization, the Hungarian Uprising and
Polish Solidarity 11
Summary of the argument 14
Overview of subsequent chapters 17
2 Theories of state–society relations 20
The social contract 21
Hegemony and the dominant ideology thesis 25
Collective action, social movements and revolution 27
State autonomy and power 32
Totalitarianism 36
Summary of the theoretical framework 39
3 Soviet collectivization 42
Historical background 43
Comparative and theoretical perspectives on peasant
rebellions 45
The state offensive against the peasant repertoire of
contention48
Patterns of public contention 55
Resistance and submission in the collective farms 59
Conclusion 66
vi Contents
4 The Hungarian Uprising 68
Overview 68
Historical background 69
The uprising, 23 October–4 November 1956 72
Bandwagons, the structure of social networks and the
repertoire of contention 75
Demands and symbolism 81
Workers’ resistance and class in Communist systems 86
Conclusion 90
5 Poland and Solidarity 94
Overview 95
Communist consolidation and the 1956 crisis 96
Economic decline, worker unrest and oppositional politics in
the 1970s 100
Strikes and the birth of Solidarity, July–August 1980 105
Which legacies and who done it? 106
Changes in the repertoire of contention, 1956–1980 111
The state of war 113
The end of the Communist system 116
Ad hocdemocracy and the totalitarian ideal 118
The Polish social movement in context 122
6 Conclusion 126
The fall of Communism, 1989–1991 126
Social contracts, hegemony, political process models, the state
and totalitarianism 130
Summary of findings 136
Notes 141
Bibliography 159
Index 170
Acknowledgements
This book arose out of a long-standing interest in the history of Commu-
nist regimes, particularly that of the Soviet Union, and a theoretical inter-
est in how dictatorships keep power. I developed these interests through
my undergraduate degree at the University of Western Australia, particu-
larly during my honours year with Richard Bosworth, and brought them
with me to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where I did my
doctoral studies.
Although I kept my focus on these concerns at the University of Illi-
nois, I was provided with a whole new set of means and methods but, more
importantly, an extremely stimulating environment for thinking about how
to build a conceptual framework and come to grips with the theoretical
aspects of the topic. For this and for his feedback on early versions of the
framework I am very grateful to James Kuklinski. When I first started
writing the manuscript in earnest, Roger Kanet was kind enough to take
on the burden of supervision, and he provided crucial grounding and
direction, as did Carol Leff, as well as a great deal of support and encour-
agement subsequently. Thanks also to Paul Diehl for his professionalism
and good advice. I owe my greatest intellectual debts to Gerry Munck,
who pushed my thinking a long way in the classroom and, as my super-
visor, was painstaking in his editing, suggestions and comments on many
earlier versions of this text.
The Hackett Committee at the University of Western Australia was
extraordinarily generous in financing my study, research and travel over
the period 1995–1998, and I would also like to express my appreciation to
the Department of Political Science and the Programme in Arms Control,
Disarmament and International Security, both at the University of Illinois,
for their funding.
Dexter Boniface and especially Heather Tafel were inspirations in
all sorts of ways and I am deeply grateful to them for their help, scholarly
and otherwise, and our long late-night discussions of comparative meth-
odology.
In Sydney Graeme Gill’s help was invaluable in giving the project the
final push it needed to get to publication.

1 Introduction
This book springs from parallel interests in a class of puzzling historical
events, and a particular form of large-scale social causation. The first
refers to the ability of small minorities of people in control of a
twentieth-century state apparatus to dominate large majorities. In the
most general sense, this phenomenon of popular subordination can be
seen as the type of dependent variable or class of outcomes to be
addressed. The second interest is how historical, structural and institu-
tional contexts influence the ways people engage in political contention.
In the most general sense this form of causation can be seen as the
independent variable.
The examples that illustrate this relationship of state dominance and
societal subordination provide some of recent history’s most dramatic and
deadly mass politics. From the millions of victims of Stalin’s time to the
collapse of the Berlin Wall, the fortunes of Soviet-type systems, as the
major ideological alternative to market democracy, indelibly marked the
twentieth century. The huge outbreaks of popular protest and rebellion
that periodically convulsed Communist systems, from their inception to
their demise, are compelling as spectacle and as memorial, but also in the
questions they prompt. For rarely has the struggle between people and
power been so starkly etched as in the countries of the ‘other Europe’.
While the democratic revolutions of 1989–1991 have meant the end of
European Communist states, the length of their existence, in the face of
general alienation and sporadic fierce resistance, provides forceful testi-
mony to the need to re-examine our theories of dictatorial regimes.
Along these lines, the argument presented here is that the particular
structure of the Communist system denied intermediate resources neces-
sary to translate collective grievances into action; these structural obs-
tacles lessened the amount of popular protest but also moulded the forms
of protest that did occur; and that the relative paucity and ineffectiveness
of popular protest entrenched the dominance of the state over society.
Answering many of the theoretical questions raised by the longevity of
this state–society relationship necessitates a consideration of structural
contexts.