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Opposition and Dissent in Soviet Type Regimes: CivilSociety and its Limitations

Online Publication Date: 01 June 2007To cite this Article: Killingsworth, Matt , (2007) 'Opposition and Dissent in SovietType Regimes: Civil Society and its Limitations', Journal of Civil Society, 3:1, 59 - 79To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/17448680701390745URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17448680701390745

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© Taylor and Francis 2007

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Opposition and Dissent in Soviet TypeRegimes: Civil Society and itsLimitations

MATT KILLINGSWORTH

Contemporary Europe Research Centre, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

ABSTRACT Following the collapse of Communist regimes in 1989, academics and dissidents alikewere quick to claim that agents of ‘civil society’ had played an integral role in the 1989 ‘VelvetRevolutions’. However, the appropriation of civil society to explain events in Eastern Europe ishighly problematic. In arguing that civil society offers an inappropriate framework in which tostudy opposition and dissent in Soviet type regimes, this article recommends dismissing thetypology for this particular scenario. Instead, a new typology, the totalitarian public sphere, isintroduced. This article concludes by elaborating on why the totalitarian public sphere serves asa more comprehensive typology by which to explain dissent and opposition in Soviet type regimes.

KEY WORDS: Soviet type regime, totalitarianism, public sphere, civil society, dissent

Introduction

The nature of new opposition in Poland, best characterised by the actions of the Komitet

Obrony Robotnikow (KOR or Committee for the Defence of Workers), prompted Jacques

Rupnik to announce ‘the end of revisionism and the rebirth of civil society’ (Rupnik,

1979). Following the publication of Rupnik’s article, scholars were quick to describe

dissenting opposition in Soviet type regimes as representative of ‘civil society’. The

main premise of this article is to challenge this assertion, and, in turn, to offer an alter-

native framework in which to discuss and analyse the actions of the dissenting opposition

in the former communist regimes of Czechoslovakia, the GDR and Poland. In arguing that

the civil society paradigm serves as an inappropriate tool by which to analyse the actions

of dissenting opposition in Soviet type regimes, it is recommended here that the typology

be dismissed from analysis of this particular scenario. Instead, it will be argued that a new

theoretical descriptive framework developed here, the totalitarian public sphere, when

Journal of Civil Society

Vol. 3, No. 1, 59–79, June 2007

Correspondence Address: Matt Killingsworth, Contemporary Europe Research Centre Level 2, 234 Queensberry

St, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia. Fax: þ61 3 8344 9507; Tel.: þ61 3 8344 9501; Email:

matthewk@unimelb.edu.au

ISSN 1744-8689 Print/1744-8697 Online/07/010059–21 # 2007 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/17448680701390745

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applied to the actions of opposition and dissent in Soviet type regimes, presents solutions

to the identified limitations of the civil society framework. This article will discuss how

the concept of the totalitarian public sphere serves as a better descriptive term and analyti-

cal framework that understands the intrusive capabilities and ‘weight’ of totalitarian

Soviet type states, while simultaneously appreciating that the nature of these regimes

did not exclude occurrences of dissenting opposition.

This article is divided into six parts. The first three are primarily concerned with civil

society: section 1 presents only a very brief historical introduction to the concept, in

acknowledging its attractiveness to intellectuals and dissidents in Communist Eastern

Europe; section 2 introduces Antonio Gramsci’s re-conceptualisation of Marx’s notion

of civil society and section 3 elaborates on the way civil society has been employed in

the analysis of opposition and dissent in Communist Eastern Europe, highlighting two

dominant themes that emerge in this modern application. Considering the name given

to this paper’s alternative framework, section 4 argues that understood as an ideal-type,

totalitarianism remains the most apt description of the Eastern European communist

regimes. Section 5 introduces Jurgen Habermas’ ‘Bourgeois Public Sphere’, the theory

of which forms the basis of this paper’s alternative analytical framework, the totalitarian

public sphere. Finally, through seven specific points, section 6 explains why the

totalitarian public sphere presents a more appropriate framework than civil society by

which to study opposition and dissent in the Soviet type regimes of Eastern Europe.

Civil Society

An Introduction

Up until the eighteenth century, the state and civil society were interchangeable terms

(Keane, 1988a, pp. 35–36). It was only during the Enlightenment, and particularly

through Adam Ferguson’s An Essay on the History of Civil Society, that a distinction

was drawn between the two. However, while Enlightenment thinkers such as Ferguson,

Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine showed enthusiasm for the concept, particularly as

an arena in which humans could free themselves from the restrictions of the state, first

G. W. F. Hegel, then later Karl Marx, were less enthusiastic; Hegel viewed civil society

as a ‘self-crippling entity in constant need of state supervision and control’ (Keane,

1988a, p. 50); for Marx, ‘civil society is a fraud’ that facilitates inequality (Gellner,

1994, pp. 1–2).

The concept enjoyed a remarkable career in Europe up until the middle of the nineteenth

century, but then fell into obscurity and disappeared from intellectual debate for well over

a century (Keane, 1988b, p. 1).

Gramscian Civil Society

Writing in 1988, John Keane announced that, ‘the old topic of the state and civil society is

again becoming a vital theme in European politics . . . [Having] first appeared at the end of

the eighteenth century [the topic] enjoyed a brief but remarkable career in Europe until the

second half of the nineteenth century, when it fell . . . into obscurity and disappeared

almost without trace’ (Keane, 1998b, p. 1). This revival was due, in no small part, to a

renewed interest in the writings of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci.

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Motivated by the failure of the revolutionary movements in the West at the end of the

First World War, and the subsequent rise of Fascism, Gramsci both revitalised and added

to the Marxist conception of civil society. Asking why capitalism continued to survive

when, according to him and other Marxists, the objective conditions existed for a Socialist

revolution, Gramsci argued that the answer lay in the superstructure, which he divided into

two parts:

one that can be called ‘civil society’, that is the ensemble of organisms commonly

called ‘private’, and that of ‘political society’ or the ‘state’. These two levels cor-

respond on the one hand to the function of ‘hegemony’ which the dominant group

exercises throughout society and on the other hand to that of ‘direct domination’

or command exercised through the State and ‘juridical’ government (Gramsci,

1971, p. 12).

Whereas Marx and Engels had argued that the failure by the working class to overthrow

their oppressors was primarily due to the coercive powers of the state, Gramsci argued that

in Western industrialised countries the system was maintained not only through coercion,

but also through consent (see Gramsci, 1971).

According to Gramsci, consent is created and re-created through the established hege-

monic power of the state. Like Marx, he argues that hegemony was organised and main-

tained in civil society through institutions such as newspapers, schools and publishing

houses. However, in a confusing and perhaps contradictory addition to this understanding,

Gramsci suggests that civil society also serves as a space where alternate hegemonies can

be established.1

It is clear why Gramsci’s vision of civil society was so attractive to intellectuals and

left-wing dissidents in the Soviet Bloc. As Robert Miller notes, Gramsci’s vision was

‘designed precisely for a situation where the opposition movement had to operate

within a strong, modern state, which it had almost no prospect of overcoming by violence

or direct political action’ (Miller, 1992, p. 6). Although Gramsci’s reformulation of the

idea of civil society did not provide a viable action plan in Fascist Italy, developments

in Eastern Europe, and particularly Poland, gave the Gramscian approach a new lease

of life. Pelczynski writes that Gramsci’s re-working of the civil society concept presents

‘an analytical framework for considering developments in advanced (capitalist) bourgeois

society (that) has been transformed into a framework for analysing the situation in contem-

porary socialist countries of East Europe’ (Pelczynski, 1988, p. 367).

However, despite the obvious applicability of the Gramscian model to Poland and

Soviet type regimes, once studied in greater depth, the model reveals serious contradic-

tions. The Gramscian model of civil society was a clear and express strategy for the over-

throw of a particular political society. However, as is clear in the writings of Adam

Michnik, in particular, the goals of both Solidarity and its predecessors were for the

‘humanising’ of the Soviet form of socialism (see Michnik, 1985). Furthermore, Grams-

ci’s model, although calling for the overthrow of the state, depended on the continuing

existence of state institutions and the legal security that these institutions provided.

Opposition in Poland formulated its actions with the memory of both the Soviet inva-

sion of Hungary and the Warsaw Pact involvement in the Prague Spring fresh in the

collective mind. It was, therefore, imperative that its actions remained ‘self-limiting’.

The serious limitations of the Gramscian model also become apparent, as once the

Opposition and dissent in Soviet type regimes 61

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Gramscian strategy became feasible, it was no longer necessary. The ability to recognise

elements of civil society appearing in the totalitarian system was a sign that the system was

already experiencing change. Therefore, the Gramscian project is already obsolete once

the objective of the transfer of ‘hegemony’ is complete.

Civil Society as Applied to Soviet type Regimes

The term ‘civil society’ has assumed an increasingly omnipresent status in political

science. Much of the term’s popularity stems from the way it has been applied to the emer-

gence in the late 1970s of democratic opposition in the Soviet satellite states, particularly

that which emerged in Poland. Following the ‘Velvet Revolutions’ in 1989, and the implo-

sion of the Soviet Union in 1991, the popularity of the term increased as a great deal of

literature chose to focus on the role that civil society might have played in these events.

However, as with much of the literature concerning civil society, each new addition to

the debate was accompanied by a different understanding of civil society. It is argued

here that it is possible to break these understandings of civil society into two broad cat-

egories: liberal/market and situation-specific. A broad overview of these definitions

will be presented with the aim of highlighting the limitations of civil society as applied

to the analysis of dissenting opposition in Soviet type regimes.

Writing about civil society and the supposed role it played in the break-up of the Soviet

Union, Chandran Kukathas and David Lovell present a narrow definition of civil society

when they define it as ‘a complex set of institutions and practices which make up “the

market”, as well as associations of individuals who join together to pursue all sorts of

goals beyond narrowly economic ones’ (Kukathas & Lovell, 1991, p. 21). However, as

Leslie Holmes (1991) notes, ‘by including the modifier “narrowly”, Kukathas and

Lovell are—at least implicitly—suggesting that civil society is basically concerned with

economic activity that is autonomous of the state’(p. 126). Similarly, Rau (1991), in

arguing that civil society is ‘a space free from both family influence and state power’

suggests that ‘civil society is market orientated, since resources, goods and services are

allocated through a spontaneous process of voluntary transactions between individuals

and their associations’ (p. 4). Definitions that present civil society as little more than

activities centred on and around market activities not only offer a very limited understand-

ing of civil society, but they have limited applicability to the analyses of dissenting oppo-

sition in totalitarian regimes. Such definitions do not allow for activities such as group

protests, nor do they allow for collective political activity beyond economic issues.

Focusing on events in Poland in 1980–1981, Andrew Arato (1992) presents a definition

of civil society that, ‘while not developed merely by the interpretation of East European

politics, is largely compatible with the trajectory of the project of the reconstruction of

civil society as it emerged in this region’ (p. 129). Rather than civil society being a

space for economic interaction, he suggests that civil society provides a counterbalance

for both the state and the economy. He defines civil society as a ‘sphere of interaction

between economy and state, composed above all of associations and publics’ (p. 128).

Arato then distinguishes civil society from a ‘political society of parties, political organ-

isations and political parties in particular parliaments’ (p. 128). He argues that

the structures of political society cannot afford to subordinate strategic criteria to the

patterns of normative integration and open minded communication characteristic of

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civil society . . .. The political role of civil society in turn is not directly related to the

control or conquest of power but to the generation of influence, through the life of

democratic associations and the unconstrained discussion in the cultural public

sphere (p. 128).

Seeking to distinguish political society from civil society only adds to the confusion

regarding the term and concept. Holmes (1991) is correct when he points out that ‘political

society in its full blooded sense is one part of civil society’ (p. 126). Arato (1991) then

defends his separation of civil society from economic society by arguing that ‘civil

society in fact represents only a dimension of the sociological norms, roles, practices,

competences and forms of dependence or a very particular angle of looking at this

world from the point of view of conscious association building and associational life’

(pp. 128–129). As argued below, separating civil society from the state and the

economy based on functional differentiation has merit. However, while Arato’s definition

offers a thought-provoking introduction to the idea of civil society, in failing to explore

differences relating to the nature of the state, it is limited in its applicability.

Also, working within the area of Soviet studies, Tismaneanu and Turner (1995) under-

stand civil society to mean ‘the unofficial, autonomous and self-regulated social activities

and initiatives undertaken outside government structures’ and, quoting Ernest Gellner,

argue that civil societies represent ‘institutional and ideological pluralism, which prevents

the establishment of monopoly of power and truth, and counterbalances those central insti-

tutions which, though necessary, might otherwise acquire such a monopoly’ (p. 4). Having

established a definition of civil society, they then argue that ‘the institutions of civil

society are necessary for the establishment of a modern democracy; and they ensure

that it functions smoothly by moderating the capriciousness of the markets and self-

aggrandising appetite of the state’ (p. 4).

Like Arato’s understanding of civil society, Tismaneanu and Turner fail to sufficiently

explore differences relating to the nature of the state, and more particularly, the form that

the state may take, in their definition. Furthermore, in arguing that civil society was a

major cause of what they call ‘Gorbachevism’, Tismaneanu and Turner are suggesting

that civil society is a project for revolution.2 Presenting civil society simultaneously as

both a revolutionary project and an institutional necessity to ensure liberal democratic

stability is not only contradictory, but also does nothing to solve the ambiguity surround-

ing understandings of the term.3

In his book Framing Democracy, Civil Society and Civic Movements in Eastern Europe,

Glenn (2001) redefines the notion of civil society as ‘a successful framing strategy with

which the democratic movements (in Poland and Czechoslovakia) mobilised support on

behalf of their aims’ (p. 24). Glenn goes on to argue that ‘the notion of “civil society”

should be reconceptualised as a master frame with which civic movements across

Eastern Europe sought to mobilise public support in light of changing political opportu-

nities’ (p. 25). Although Glenn presents his framework as a solution to ‘monocausal

logic and conceptual imprecision’, this redefinition of civil society appears to be limited

in its application only to the events that occurred in Eastern Europe in 1989.

In a similar argument to that offered by Glenn, Baker (1998) suggests that the methods

of the Polish democratic opposition can be best understood through the unique ‘Polish

model of civil society’ (p. 125). In an eloquent argument, Baker points out that, framed

against a totalitarian state, the Polish re-conceptualisation of civil society as ‘the realm

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of freedom that the very annexation of civil society by the state . . . had precluded’ served

as a critique of classical alternatives of reform and revolution (p. 142). But Baker’s nor-

mative model is still problematic. First, as with Glenn above, this idea of civil society is

‘situation-limited’. Secondly, in arguing that what he calls the ‘Polish model of civil

society’ was unable to reconcile the radical and liberal elements contained in their

model, Baker is arguing that the aim of the dissenting opposition in Poland was not

only the overthrow of the Communist Party-state, but also the establishment of liberal–

democratic institutions.

While not working within the field of Soviet studies, the definition of civil society that

Gellner (1995) presents in Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals appreciates

the importance of the nature of the relationship between the state and civil society. He

defines civil society as a

set of diverse, non-government institutions which are strong enough to counter-

balance the state and, while not preventing the state from fulfilling its role of

keeper of the peace and arbitrator between major interests, can nevertheless

prevent it from dominating and atomising the rest of society (p. 5).

In pointing out the need to ‘counterbalance the state’, Gellner’s definition implicitly

appreciates the nature of the state and how this relates to the existence of civil society.

This definition highlights the importance of civil society being juxtaposed to the state,

rather than acting completely independent of, or against, the state. He also makes it

clear that a key function of civil society is the prevention of state domination and atomisa-

tion of the rest of society. It is possible, however, to make an addition, using Michael

Bernhard’s understanding of civil society, to Gellner’s definition of civil society. Bernhard

(1993) introduces notions of law into his understanding of civil society when he writes that

‘civil society must be legally separated from the state by law, and the actors within it must

be guaranteed specific personal and group liberties, so they may pursue their real and ideal

interests’ (p. 4). When this legal component of civil society is added to the definition, the

relationship between civil society and the state becomes mutually appreciative, as both are

legally recognised. Furthermore, a legal demarcation means that the state is not prevented

from ‘fulfilling its role of keeper of the peace and arbitrator between mutual interests’.

This adapted definition best encapsulates what most theorists argue civil society is or

what it should be.

Combining Gellner’s civil society–state equilibrium with Bernhard’s legal demarcation

makes for the most complete and satisfactory understanding of civil society. But, consider-

ing the totalitarian states’ ability to dominate and atomise society, combined with the

clearly liberal institutional underpinnings of this definition, it still does not provide us

with an adequate analytical framework through which to analyse the actions of the dissent-

ing opposition in Soviet type regimes.

The application of liberal/market civil society frameworks to activities of opposition

and dissent in Soviet type regimes, as exemplified by Kukathas and Lovell, Rau, Baker

and Tismaneanu and Turner (and Gellner to a lesser degree) are problematic for a

number of reasons. Such applications form part of the powerful consensus that has devel-

oped around liberal interpretations not only of the events of 1989, but also of dissenting

opposition in Communist regimes in general. First, it is argued here that using a

liberal/market civil society paradigm to study opposition within these regime types

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results in analysis that is tainted by Cold War dichotomies; the tendency to compare these

regimes to Western market democracies becomes unavoidable. Hence, conclusions

reached using this framework are often reduced to a Manichaean idea that totalitarianism

is bad and civil society is good. Secondly, liberal/market civil society analyses of 1989

place too much emphasis on ‘bottom-up’ explanations for these events. While bottom-

up factors played a part, the capitulation of the Communist Party-state was negotiated

in many cases by a small number of elites in relatively non-transparent ‘round table’ nego-

tiations. Thirdly, much of this liberal analysis offers not only a political prognosis of

events, but ‘an historical interpretation to the effect that liberal democratic institutions

were the intended outcome’ of said events (Isaac, 1998, p. 158). But, and in direct contrast

to Baker’s claim, Jeffrey Isaac correctly points out that while certainly democratic, it is not

clear that the dissenting opposition was unambiguously liberal democratic (p. 159).

Following from this is the fourth and final point: such analysis implicitly suggests that

the establishment of a flourishing, post-revolution civil society is a given. However, as

Morje Howard’s (2002) research reveals, many of the post-Communist Eastern European

states are still struggling to establish a thriving civil society.

Those understandings of civil society identified under the broad description of situation-

specific (Arato, Glenn and Baker) are restricted by two problems. The first is that they are

limited in their applicability to very particular events, i.e., the 1989 Revolutions or the

events of 1980–1981 in Poland. Secondly, as with the liberal conception, these normative

conceptions make assumptions about the likely outcome of any dissenting opposition and

hence provide answers to questions before they are asked.

Totalitarianism

Having argued above the importance of the state when considering civil society, it is per-

tinent to outline the defining characteristics of Soviet type regimes. It is argued here that

Czechoslovakia, the GDR and Poland were all, to varying degrees, totalitarian regimes.

Appreciating the level of often-heated debate surrounding the concept of totalitarianism,

especially in the way the term has been utilised in the past, this part of the paper will illus-

trate how, when utilised as an ideal-type, totalitarianism serves as the term that best encap-

sulates the relationship between the leaders and led in the Soviet type regimes studied

here. Having done this, the reasons for titling the ‘totalitarian public sphere’ as such

will become apparent.

First introduced by Italian writer Giovanni Gentile to describe Mussolini’s Fascist

regime, the connotations of this term were initially favourable. However, once used to

describe the dictatorships of Hitler and Stalin, the term took on a more negative and mena-

cing connotation (Canovan, 1998).

The concept assumed analytical value when developed as an ideal type by Carl

Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski. In their book Totalitarian Dictatorship and

Autocracy, they argued that totalitarian dictatorships should be characterised by six

‘basic features’.4 Like Hannah Arendt, they argued that the totalitarian regime was a dis-

tinctive modern form of dictatorship of which Nazi Germany under Hitler and Stalin’s

Communist Russia were the most prominent examples (see Arendt, 1968). Importantly,

Friedrich and Brzezinski argue that a completely totalitarian system cannot be achieved

in practice in such an extreme form; in such systems there still exist ‘islands of

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separateness’, havens free from encroachment by the regime (Friedrich & Brzezinski,

1966, p. 279).

A central tenet of classical totalitarianism theory is the role of terror in totalitarian

regimes. According to this theory, coercive capabilities of these regimes are so great

that political change from within is virtually impossible.5 Chalmers Johnson reflects

this when arguing ‘very possibly the most damning criticism of Communism in power

is that its practitioners have been unable to think of any way other than terror to bring

about the changes they desire’ (cited in Dallin & Breslauer, 1978, p. vi). While Johnson’s

statement is exaggerated, the clear significance of terror in totalitarian regimes necessitates

a discussion of the term, including a definition.

The first of these definitions is that presented by Robert Slusser. Writing in 1972,

Slusser (1972) turns to the definition offered by Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary

and defines terror as ‘the systematic use of violent means by a party or faction to maintain

itself in power’ (p. 428). As Holmes points out, there is a point at which quantitative differ-

ences in levels of coercion become a qualitative difference between a ‘highly coercive’

and a ‘terroristic’ regime (Holmes, 1987, p. 59). Therefore, the Slusser definition does

not help in distinguishing between coercion and terror.

An alternative definition, presented by Alexander Dallin and George Breslauer, offers a

more apposite understanding of the term. They define political terror as the arbitrary use,

by organs of political authority, of severe coercion against individuals or groups, the cred-

ible threat of such use or the arbitrary extermination of such individuals or groups (Dallin

& Breslauer, 1978, p. 1). This definition is far more satisfactory for a number of reasons.

First, it makes a clear distinction between state terror and terror employed by groups other

than the state. Secondly, and most importantly, it is the use (twice) of the word ‘arbitrary’

that sets this definition apart. As Holmes notes, ‘one of the features that distinguishes terror

from other forms of coercion is that those affected by it are unaware of the “rules of the

game”. . . Citizens must be able to predict whether their actions or words (or non-actions

and silence) will bring them into conflict with state authorities; when they cannot, terror is

present’ (Holmes, 1987, p. 59). Dallin and Breslauer further highlight this point when

they write:

Although at times the boundaries between terror and other calculable forms of coer-

cion are vague, coercive means other than terror leave the victim an opportunity to

orientate himself and foresee the consequences of his actions; terror typically does

not. It tends to erode the relatively stable patterns of expectations required by social

organization. Under conditions of terror, even conformity does not assure security or

survival (Dallin and Breslauer, 1978, p. 4).

It is this element of arbitrariness—or, from the vantage point of the citizen, the unpredict-

ability—in the use of terror that is its distinguishing mark.

Another important aspect of the Dallin and Breslauer understanding of terror is the dis-

tinction drawn between the notion of a threat of severe and arbitrary coercion and actual

arbitrary coercion. By including the notion of a ‘credible threat’, Dallin and Breslauer’s

definition is a lot more acceptable.

After the death of Stalin and his denouncement by Khrushchev at the 20th Party

Congress in 1956, the cognitive value of totalitarianism was questioned. It was argued

that it was no longer appropriate to use the same term to describe the Soviet Union

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under both Stalin and Khrushchev (see Curtis, 1969), especially since by the 1960s,

Khrushchev was making references to his predecessor’s crimes. The term became even

more unpopular in the 1970s as the relationship between the Soviet Union and the

United States moved into a phase of detente (Holmes, 2001, p. 15790). However, as

Thompson (1998) points out, East European intellectuals came to regard the term totali-

tarianism as an effective means of highlighting the fundamental distinctiveness of

Marxist–Leninist regimes.

While recognising that the role of ideology had changed, and there had been a reduction

in overt, Stalinist terror (although appreciating it had not been eliminated), East European

dissidents argued that as long as communist parties continued to rule in the name of

Marxist–Leninist principles, these regimes could best be understood as totalitarian

regimes. As with the totalitarianism of Arendt and Friedrich and Brzezinski, East

European dissidents understood ideology and terror to be the defining characteristics of

the systems they lived in.

A proponent of this point of view was Vaclav Havel (in Blair, 1987). In an interview

conducted in 1987, Havel argued that Czechoslovakia, and by implication, all the

Soviet type regimes in Eastern Europe were totalitarian. He argued that totalitarianism

was a system which, through the dominance of the ideology, absorbs the whole of society:

From morning to night, everything every ordinary citizen does is in some way inter-

fered with by the system. The regime leaves its mark on everything . . .. You can see

this manipulation in apparently trivial things, such as the opening and closing times

of restaurants, which are conceived with a view to discouraging people from sitting

around too long, and encouraging them to get off home to their television screens to

watch the messages broadcast by the centralised media (p. 81).

Like K, the main protagonist in Franz Kafka’s The Trial, Havel knows of the ‘fog’ that

envelops totalitarian systems.

This East European understanding of totalitarianism paid particular attention to the

regimes’ ability to manipulate information to the extent that the very basis of the ‘truth’

is destroyed. The dissidents understood that originally, the ideology has served as a

guiding, utopian principle; it now served as a general justification for continued commu-

nist rule. In elaborating on this idea, Havel (1990) argued that individuals need no longer

believe in what he called the regimes’ ‘mystifications’, ‘but they must behave as if they did

. . . they must live within a lie’ (p. 31). It is this notion of the ideology, and the regime’s

ability to control the truth through the ideology, that resonated with many East European

dissidents.

As Havel (1990) highlights in his seminal essay ‘The Power of the Powerless’, post-

Stalin, the ideology is no longer believed by either the regime or society. Importantly,

while both the regime and the greengrocer recognise this reality, the greengrocer still

feels compelled to behave in a way expected of by the regime. According to Havel, in tota-

litarian regimes, ‘a general and all embracing lie begins to predominate; people begin

adapting to it, and everyone in some part of their lives compromises with the lie or coexists

with it’ (Blair, 1987, p. 81). While the official cannon remained in the Soviet type systems

of Eastern Europe, belief in it waned. But, as argued above, it continued to serve a function

in determining the relationship between leaders and the led.

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Regarding terror, it also remained an integral part of the Soviet type systems in Eastern

Europe. Again, this is best explained by Havel (in Blair, 1987), who points out that while

the nature of totalitarian power has changed, this does not mean terror has been eradicated.

Rather, the regime now indulged in less obvious forms of terror:

The violence in our system will never be seen by a tourist or a visitor. It is the kind of

violence they would see only if they got a job at CKD Engineering Works in Prague

. . . They would realise how much they were at the power of the all-powerful

bureaucracy so that for every little thing they need to approach some official or

other . . . These are features of the totalitarian system which can neither be filmed

by television camera nor easily explained to outsiders . . . (p. 82).

Granted, while demotion, reduction in pay and the loss of holidays are undesirable, these

forms of sanctions are far removed from the horror of concentration camps and arbitrary

executions. However, while the nature of the terror may have changed, the fear of totali-

tarian terror remained, and combined with regular arbitrary ‘crackdowns’, served as an

integral determinant in the relationship between the regime and the citizenry.

As noted above, much of Western scholars’ dislike for the typology stemmed from its

supposed inability to account for change. However, for Soviet and Eastern European dis-

sidents alike, the system maintained, to varying degrees, its key characteristics, i.e., while

internal changes may have taken place, the main instruments of the totalitarian state

remained intact. Sharing the sentiments of Havel, Smolar (1996) argues that while

socialism of the 1970s and 1980s was obviously different from that of the 1940s and

1950s . . . the institutions created during the revolutionary period retained their form

. . . totalitarianism as a millenarian movement had long since died, but the set of

institutions that it had created was left behind like the fossilised carcass of some

extinct beast . . . (p. 26).

Hence, for so many Soviet and East European intellectuals, academics and dissidents, no

term is as suggestive of their country’s experience as totalitarianism is (Gleason, 1995).

That the only example of a fully regulated society rendered uniform under the effect of

terror and ideology appears to be in George Orwell’s 1984 does not render totalitarianism

obsolete. Furthermore, attempts to appropriate the idea for moral and political purposes,

hence stripping it of analytical and descriptive values, also should not render totalitarian-

ism obsolete.

Rather, what is required, and what has been done here, is an explanation as to how,

when understood as an ideal-type, totalitarianism serves as the most appropriate term

by which to describe the Soviet type regimes analysed here. When one considers the con-

tinuing insistence on the ‘leading role’ of the Party-state and the regular occurrence of

arbitrary ‘crackdowns’ supported by the omnipresent ‘Brezhnev Doctrine’, it is not unrea-

sonable to argue that Czechoslovakia, the GDR and Poland constituted totalitarian

regimes. Appreciating that totalitarianism is best utilised as a tool to both describe and

analyse the relationship between the Party-state and the dissenting opposition, it is

argued here that totalitarianism best explains the relationship between the Party-state

(the leaders) and the citizenry (the led).

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Public Spheres

Habermas and Beyond

Having highlighted the limitations of the Gramscian conception, and both the situation-

specific and liberal/market conceptions of civil society, and argued the cognitive benefits

of understanding Communist Czechoslovakia, the GDR and Poland as totalitarian

regimes, it now becomes possible to introduce and elaborate on this paper’s alternative

descriptive and analytical frameworks.

In his seminal text, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Jurgen

Habermas introduces a public sphere that comes into existence whenever and wherever

all affected by general social and political norms of action engage in a practical discourse,

assessing their validity. The public sphere can be viewed as the creation of procedures,

whereby those affected by general social norms and collective political decisions can

have a say in this formulation, stipulation and adoption. It will be argued here that

there are characteristics of Habermas’ public sphere that can be taken and applied in

the study of opposition and dissent in Soviet type regimes. However, in appreciating

that Habermas formulated his idea of the bourgeois public sphere in a social environment

far removed from that of the Soviet type regimes found in Eastern Europe in the latter half

of the twentieth century, and in order to differentiate from Habermas’ public sphere, this

new framework will be referred to as the totalitarian public sphere.

By the public sphere, Habermas (1989a) was speaking of

a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be

formed. Access is guaranteed to all citizens . . . . Citizens behave as a public body

when they confer in an unrestricted fashion–that is, with the guarantee of

freedom of assembly and association and the freedom to publish and express their

opinions–about matters of general interest . . . (p. 136).

As a sphere between civil society and the state, in which critical public discussion of

matters of general interest were institutionally guaranteed, the public sphere took in the

specific historical circumstances of a developing market economy.6

According to Habermas, the idea of the public sphere is that of a collective of private

people gathered to discuss matters of public interest or the common good: ‘it was a

public sphere constituted by private people’ of which its political task was ‘the regulation

of civil society (in contradistinction to the res publica) (1989b, pp. 30 and 52, emphasis

added).

The public sphere is an area conceptually distinct from the state. Furthermore, as far as

Habermas is concerned, it is also conceptually distinct from the official economy. As

Fraser (1992) correctly notes ‘it is not an area of market relations, but rather one of dis-

cursive relations . . .. Thus the concept of the public sphere permits us to keep in view

the distinctions among state apparatuses, economic markets, and democratic associations

. . .’ (p. 111).

Habermas (1989b) makes it very clear that the bourgeois public sphere is a historically

specific phenomenon: ‘the bourgeois public sphere is a category that is typical of an

epoch. It cannot be abstracted from the unique developmental history of that civil

society originating in the Europe High Middle Ages; nor can it be transferred, ideal

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typically generalised, to any number of historical situations that represent formally similar

constellations’ (p. xvii).

As Cohen and Arato (1992a) point out, Habermas’ public sphere is bourgeois:

because in it, independent owners of property, divided into their competitive, ego-

istic economic activities that have grown vastly beyond the limits of the household,

are capable of generating a collective will through the medium of rational, uncon-

strained communication (p. 211, emphasis added).

Inasmuch as Habermas’ public sphere was a clearly identifiable milieu, distinct from

that of the state, the public sphere should not be thought of as non-political. In this

manner, it served as an environment in which to check authoritarian power.

In short, the bourgeois public sphere served two functions. First, it was a setting in

which the critical public could address social problems and check institutional authority.

Secondly, it designated a particular kind of discursive interaction. The discussion was to

be open, unrestricted and accessible to all. Hence, participants in the public sphere were

treated as peers. Merely private interests were to be inadmissible. The result of such com-

municative activity would be the establishment of a public opinion concerning collective

notions of the common good.

A number of prominent academics have subsequently engaged with the Habermasian

notion of the public sphere and its relation to civil society. As with Jean Cohen and

Andrew Arato, Young (2000) posits herself within a broadly Habermasian framework

when she expands on the theme of communicative action by suggesting that the activity

that constitutes civil society corresponds to the activities described by Habermas’ as con-

stituting the ‘lifeworld’. In a continuation of this theme, Young adopts Cohen and Arato’s

dualistic notion of civil society. However, while Cohen and Arato (1992) describe ‘defen-

sive’ (the way associations and social movements develop forms of communicative inter-

action that expand participatory possibilities and create networks of solidarity) and

‘offensive’ (whereby associational activity aims to influence or reform state or corporate

policies and practices) aspects of civil society, (pp. 136–139), Young refers to these

activities respectively as the aspect of self organisation and the activity of the public

sphere (Young, 2000, pp. 165–166). Considering the focus of this paper, it is apt to

examine Young’s notion of the public sphere and what it contributes to civil society.

While Young argues that civil society should not be described using spatial language,7 she

argues that referring to the public sphere with spatial metaphors is appropriate, as it ‘enables

the theory to say that a society has one continuous public sphere without reducing those who

are “in” it to common attributes or interests’ (p. 171). As with Habermas, Young argues that

the public sphere is the primary connector between people and power; ‘In the public sphere

political actors raise issues, publish information, opinions, and aesthetic expression, criticise

actions and policies, and propose new policies and practices. When widely discussed and dis-

seminated, these issues, criticisms, images and proposals sometimes provoke political and

social change’ (p. 173). However, unlike Habermas (and Cohen and Arato), who argue

that a functioning public sphere is an essential precondition for civil society, Young

argues that it is civil society that enables the emergence of public spheres (p. 155).

Young’s distinction between state, economy and civil society based on function is

insightful. Related to this argument, and equally insightful, is Young’s argument that

the public sphere, and not civil society, should be referred to using spatial metaphors.

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But, as Young admits, her investigation asks about ‘the function and limits of civic associ-

ation in the context of societies guided by a rule of law that recognises basic liberties, and

have democratic political practices, but where structural injustices exist’ (p. 155). There-

fore, while providing beneficial guiding ideas, further work is required if the Habermasian

notion of the public sphere is to be utilised in an examination of dissenting opposition in

the Soviet type regimes of Eastern Europe.

More recently, the appropriateness of the public sphere as an analytical tool by which to

examine social space has been addressed in Public Spheres in Soviet-Type Societies:

Between the Great Show of the Party-State and Religious Counter-Cultures, a collection

printed in a combination of English and German, edited by Gabor Rittersporn, Malte Rolf

and Jan Behrends. Unlike the above discussed analyses, this text focuses on social space in

the former Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and its East European satellites.

Rather than offering a definitive answer on the applicability of the public sphere as a

research tool, this book suggests ways one might go about utilising this framework,

while at the same time pointing out possible pitfalls. The way in which this volume

addresses both the existence and applicability of a public sphere is best summarised in

the concluding sentence of the introduction; ‘ . . . inquiries focusing on social spaces

and communicative structures as the public sphere are likely to enlarge our vision not

only of Soviet type regimes but also of regimes which succeeded them’ Rittersporn

et al. (2003a, p. 35). It is with these thoughts that this project was undertaken.

Expanding on the argument made by Nancy Fraser, Rittersporn et al. argue that the public

sphere in Soviet type societies is best understood as constituting multiple public spheres. The

first sphere that Rittersporn et al. identified was a realm which they refer to as the official

public sphere. The official public sphere was dominated by the Party-state, and is best

viewed as an event staged by the Party-state. Further, this was a manufactured public

sphere. Its creation was a formal project, the goal of which was to generate a participating,

critical public opinion from where the fully developed Soviet man would emanate (2003b, p.

438).8 The official public sphere was the arena where, through ostentatious displays such as

banner waving, birthday parades for Party luminaries, monument inaugurations and naming

or renaming of streets, officials sought to legitimise the regime (see Behrends, 2004; Brooks,

2000; Petrone, 2000). Perversely, this was the same sphere in which the activities of the

secret police, secret camps, secret Politburo meetings and media control and censorship

also took place. The omnipresent nature of the state means that these contrasting activities

took place in the same milieu. This was not a domain in which a critique of the state appar-

atus could be mobilised.9 This is further emphasised when one appreciates that the state

withheld the right to shut down this public sphere when it saw fit.

While using the word ‘official’ to describe the Party-state controlled realm is appropri-

ate, the activity undertaken in this sphere certainly does not constitute that of a

Habermasian public sphere. The official sphere described by Rittersporn et al. was

manufactured, uncritical and closed and restricted.

As well as the official public sphere, Rittersporn et al. identify what they call an

‘alternative public sphere’. They argue that due to the overwhelming power of the official

public sphere, alternative public spheres withdrew into certain niches and that alternative

forms of communication developed within these niches (2003b, pp. 440–41). It is this

sphere that it is of most interest to this research. However, rather than continually

making reference to a non-specific ‘alternative public sphere’, this paper regards this

milieu as a totalitarian public sphere. It is argued here that ascribing the term ‘totalitarian

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public sphere’ to this milieu appreciates the specifically limited nature of this ‘public’,

while simultaneously acknowledging that although described as totalitarian, dissenting

opposition existed within these regime types.

Rittersporn et al. touch briefly on another issue that is integral to the argument made

here when they state ‘ . . . recent research has shown that the symbols, themes and

dreams of the official canon permeated this sphere’ (2003b, p. 441). This is important.

Although they have identified an alternative public sphere that exists outside the official

sphere, Rittersporn et al. also appreciate that the nature of Soviet type systems meant

that even alternative public spheres were not totally removed from the omniscient gaze

of the state. This observation by Rittersporn et al. further supports references to a totali-

tarian public sphere.

The Totalitarian Public Sphere

Rittersporn et al. are correct when they argue ‘the uniqueness of public spheres can only be

recognised in contrast to the functions and characteristic of public spheres in liberal-demo-

cratic societies . . . This should include more, however, than a simple listing of deficits in

Soviet societies compared to the ideal normative model of the bourgeois society’ (2003b,

p. 435). In appreciating these comments, and acknowledging that Habermas made it quite

clear that his study on the transformation of the bourgeois public sphere primarily dealt

with a liberal tradition grounded in Western capitalism, seven qualifications are offered

here. They serve two functions: first as points of distinction between Habermas’ public

sphere and the concept of the totalitarian public sphere developed here and secondly, to

elaborate on how the totalitarian public sphere not only presents solutions to the identified

limitations of the civil society framework, but serves as a better descriptive term and

analytical framework.

First, Habermas asserted that his public sphere facilitated a ‘guarantee of freedom of

assembly and association and the freedom to express their opinions’. However, opposition

groups in totalitarian regimes were rarely, if ever, guaranteed these kinds of freedoms. For

example, during the Prague Spring, while new forms of association were briefly tolerated,

they were never fully independent of the Party-state. Indeed, according to Hauner (1989),

the Action Programme ‘could not have been more conservative so as not to arouse anger in

Moscow’ (p. 217). Additionally, the ease with which ‘normalisation’ policies were intro-

duced serves to further strengthen the argument that Czechoslovakia was totalitarian. In

later years, members of Charter 77 were regularly harassed, subjected to house searches

and were often arbitrarily arrested and detained (see Renner, 1989; Skilling, 1981). In

the GDR, the degree to which the Stasi infiltrated almost all spheres of life, creating a

climate of fear and mistrust that pervaded nearly all aspects of life, and establishing a

‘credible threat’ through arbitrary crackdowns, serves to underpin claims concerning

the totalitarian nature of the GDR; Fulbrook (1995) correctly argues that there was ‘vir-

tually no social group, no area of life or leisure, which was not in some way contained

or captured by a relevant SED-controlled organization’ (p. 60). While Poland was argu-

ably the most rambunctious of the three totalitarian regimes studied here, it was also argu-

ably the least totalitarian; Poles experienced less Party-state intrusion than was

experienced in the other Soviet type regimes. However, the prominence of arbitrarily coer-

cive policies, combined with the maintenance of a monopoly over information throughout

Poland’s Communist history, again serves to support the argument that Poland was

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totalitarian. Even during the period when Solidarity was legalised, there was little insti-

tutional change; few of Solidarity’s gains received irreversible legal consolidation.

While labour felt that it had greater freedom of action there was still no law guaranteeing

the right to strike. Similarly, there was no law banning or even limiting censorship

(Crampton, 1997, p. 372). Following the imposition of martial law, many of the negotiated

gains were quickly rescinded; civil liberties and freedoms outlined in the constitution were

suspended, as were the activities of the legally registered associations and organisations. A

nationwide curfew was imposed, and travel to places other than one’s permanent residence

was prohibited. As discussed above, this lack of guaranteed autonomous space, general

lack of associated freedoms and the fear perpetuated by the various security apparatuses,

combined with the Brezhnev Doctrine, lends weight to the argument that these regimes

remained totalitarian.

Secondly, while Habermas’ public sphere is ‘a realm . . . in which something approach-

ing public opinion can be formed’, in Soviet type regimes, as part of its maintenance of the

‘leading role’, the Party-state controlled public opinion. Despite the dissenting opposition

clearly understanding this, in each of the Czechoslovakia, the GDR and Poland, one of the

driving concerns was the establishment of an alternative public opinion, often through

what Havel called ‘revealing the truth’. Therefore, while it has been argued here that

these regimes were totalitarian, it is clear that this did not mean there was no opposition

to the Party-state. However, unlike in Habermas’ public sphere, an alternate public opinion

could not be established through formal elections. This, and that the attempt to establish an

alternative public opinion was done in a non-sanctioned space, make it necessary to

present a reformulated public sphere.

Thirdly, Habermas’ naming of the bourgeois public sphere reflects his assertion that it

was the property-owning elite (the bourgeoisie) who began to question public authority.

Yet, in Czechoslovakia, the GDR and Poland, a variety of groups were responsible for

the establishment of opposition movements. Like the property-owning class in the

bourgeois public sphere, they all identified concerns that they believed had become ‘a

subject of public interest’. In Czechoslovakia, Charter 77, a self-described free, open

and informal assembly, through the dissemination of samizdat, sought to establish a

counter public opinion, a move that simultaneously challenged the authority of the

Party-state. Likewise, Civic Forum argued that they represented a public that was becom-

ing increasingly ostracised, hence, undermining the ‘leading role’ status of the Komunis-

ticka Strana Ceskoslovenska (KSC [Czechoslovak Communist Party]). In the GDR, before

the 1980s, the dissenting opposition generally consisted of disenchanted Marxists. During

the 1980s, groups with a variety of concerns, including what they saw as the increasing

militarisation of the GDR, from a variety of backgrounds, challenged the authority of

the Party-state. In Poland, while significant moments of dissenting opposition against

the Party-state took place relatively frequently, the nature of this opposition was certainly

not consistent. Whereas early uprisings were determined by the concerns of the workers

and students, Komitet Obrony Robotnikow (KOR [Committee for the Defence of

Workers]) (later to become KOR-KSS [Komitet Samoobrany Społecznej–Social Self-

Defence Committee]) was established by intellectuals responding to the regime’s brutal

repression of the June 1976 workers’ strikes. Again, such enterprise undermined the

Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robitnicza (PZPR [Polish United Workers Party])’s claim to

be representative of the Polish people. Similarly, the demands made by Solidarity at the

Gdansk Shipyards in 1980, in particular, the insistence on the formation of independent

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trade unions (see the Gdansk Agreement, 1996) were aimed at forming a public opinion

distinct from that manufactured by the Party-state. In contrast to Habermas, labelling

this thesis’ conception of the public sphere ‘totalitarian’, is not to suggest that it was ‘tota-

litarians’ that questioned the authority of the Communist Party-state. Rather, the totalitar-

ian public sphere is a term designed to reflect the ‘weight’ of these regimes. At the same

time, the concept of the totalitarian public sphere appreciates that the dissenting opposition

in Soviet type regimes sought to form an alternative ‘public’. Yet, as explained above,

such attempts took place within a political entity that mostly refused to recognise their

existence.

Fourthly, Habermas’ bourgeois public sphere presented a setting where the public could

place a check on the potentially authoritarian power of the state. In arguing the necessity for

major modifications to Habermas’ bourgeois public sphere in developing the concept of the

totalitarian public sphere, and applying it to dissenting opposition in Soviet type regimes,

two points can be made. First, the degree to which any of these groups was able to check

the power of the Party-state is debatable. Institutions were often either co-opted to the

Party-state (much of the Lutheran Church in the GDR), harassed into submission (the

Catholic Church, to varying degrees, in Czechoslovakia and Poland), or, as was the case

with the Jugendweihe in the GDR, alternative social institutions were established by the

Party-state; hence the need to present a revamped version of Habermas’ public sphere.

Secondly, as this paper’s adopted definition of civil society pointed out, the most complete

understandings of civil society situate the state and civil society in a complex, mutually

appreciative relationship. In contrast, the relationship between the bourgeois public

sphere and the state was not as complex as the relationship between civil society and the

state, in that it did not specify recognition of the bourgeois public sphere by the state.

Similarly, by definition, actions within the totalitarian public sphere do not need to be recog-

nised by the state. Considering the lack of recognition (Solidarity serves as an exception,

albeit a short-lived one) of the various groups by the Party-state, it is argued here that the

totalitarian public sphere overcomes this deficiency in the civil society paradigm.

Fifthly, offering the reformulated public sphere as a more appropriate framework in

which to analyse opposition allowed Habermas’ claim that ‘the bourgeois public sphere

could be understood as the sphere of private individuals assembled into a public body,

which almost immediately laid claim to the officially regulated ‘intellectual newspapers’

for use against the public authority itself’ to be updated so as to incorporate the samizdat

publications that proliferated during this period. The dissemination of printed material

served as a vital element in establishing an alternative public sphere. All of the significant

dissenting opposition, albeit to varying degrees, disseminated samizdat. For example, it

was shown that the main modus operandi of Charter 77 was the distribution of samizdat.

In the GDR, the Initiative Frieden und Menschenrechte produced Grenzfall, the ‘first truly

samizdat publication of the GDR’ (Fulbrook, 1995, p. 219). According to the leaders of the

IFM, Grenzfall, like the dissident literature in neighbouring Soviet type regimes, was

designed to create a network of information for those involved in the political under-

ground. Likewise, in Poland, KOR, KOR-KSS, Solidarity and Underground Solidarity

as well as a variety of quasi-independent publishing houses (of which NOWa-was the

best known), published a range of underground literature and information pamphlets,

all of which constituted a major part of their oppositional activity. For H. Gordon Skilling,

in its simplest form, samizdat ‘offered a way in which the individual could maintain his

intellectual integrity and achieve a certain degree of freedom under repressive conditions’.

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At a more complex level, samizdat helped to ‘protect and develop a second or alternative

culture’ and ‘served as a channel for the expression of political dissent and opposition’

(Skilling, 1989, p. 17).10 While Habermas’ ‘intellectual newspapers’ and samizdat were

important media in their respective milieu, the differences between each, particularly

the fact that samizdat publications were often arbitrarily closed down or re-subjected to

state censorship, are important enough to warrant a qualifier.

Sixthly, it is maintained that the totalitarian public sphere offers a more appropriate

understanding than civil society of the 1989 revolutions regarding the ‘self-limiting’ strat-

egy and use of Aesopian language by opposition groups in Soviet type regimes after the

Prague Spring. The ‘self-limiting’ strategy, best exemplified by Adam Michnik’s ‘New

Evolutionism’ (1985), had as its founding tenet the recognition of the centrality of the

Party-state and its associated mechanisms. Hence, opposition movements went to great

lengths to ensure they were not viewed as a challenge to the Party-state. For example,

in its founding letter, Charter 77 announced that it ‘is not an organization; it has no

rules, permanent bodies, or formal membership . . .. It does not aim, then, to set out its

own programmes for political or social reforms or changes . . .’ (‘Charter 77’, 1996, pp.

165–166). Similarly, Michnik felt it essential to assure the Party-state of Solidarity’s

non-political nature (see Arato, 1981). Even when granted legal standing, Solidarity

was still required to acknowledge the continuing ‘leading role’ of the PZPR (see ‘The

Gdansk Agreement, 1996, p. 205). Groups who failed to assure the authorities of their

non-political nature, such as the IFM, were often brutally repressed or, in the later years

of the GDR’s existence, deported to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Further-

more, the civil society typology, as applied to dissenting opposition in Soviet type

regimes, does not appropriately acknowledge the nature of the state. Hence, in not fully

appreciating the particular characteristics of totalitarian regimes, the civil society typology

does not allow adequate exploration of the need by the dissenting opposition for the use of

Aesopian language. It is suggested here that utilizing the concept of the totalitarian public

sphere provides a better insight into the use by the dissenting opposition of such language.

Hence, two conclusions can be reached. First, the action of the opposition movements

serves to reinforce the argument that these regimes were totalitarian. Secondly, in such

an environment, identifying civil society is not possible. Therefore, civil society as a

framework by which to explain opposition and dissent becomes redundant. The totalitar-

ian public sphere aims to provide a solution to this problem.

Finally, by reformulating Habermas’ idea, the totalitarian public sphere consciously

appreciates the ‘instructions’ that Habermas issues when he writes that the ‘bourgeois

public sphere . . . (can not) be transferred, ideal typically generalised, to any number of

historical situations that represent formally similar constellations’.

Conclusion

As argued earlier, the use of the civil society paradigm is severely limited by its historical

attachments to Enlightenment ideas; when it is used as a descriptive term in non-

democratic regimes, the assumption is that the establishment of liberal democratic

institutions is predetermined. This is particularly evident when one considers the way in

which aforementioned authors have suggested that a nascent civil society in Eastern

Europe facilitated the mobilisation for a ‘democracy project’ in these countries. The use

of the concept in this manner is underpinned by an almost Fukuyamaesque triumphalism.

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Even attaching qualifiers such as ‘nascent’ or ‘embryonic’ to the term civil society fails to

solve the problems highlighted here. In using such qualifiers, there is an implicit assump-

tion that the establishment of a flourishing civil society is a given. The assumption con-

tinues to its (il)logical conclusion that the establishment of a flourishing market

democracy is also a given. The nature of the political systems that have emerged in the

former Soviet type regimes, and the stagnant growth of civil society in most of these

states, only further undermines the usefulness of civil society as an explanatory framework.

In contrast, the totalitarian public sphere is able to explain the dissenting opposition’s

desire to establish democratic spheres away from the heavy gaze of the Party-state

without assuming the establishment of liberal-democratic institutions. In utilising the

concept of the totalitarian public sphere, it has been argued that one of the main drawbacks

to the civil society paradigm can be overcome; namely, the limited, ‘Western’ analysis this

paradigm presents. The nature of the totalitarian public sphere also allows students to

analyse activities within these regimes without indulging in moral judgements.

The application of the totalitarian public sphere provides a deeper understanding as to

the methods adopted by the dissenting opposition in totalitarian regimes, especially,

regarding the language used by the dissenting opposition. While the writings of Cohen

and Arato and Young, working within a broad Habermasian framework, acknowledge

the importance of differentiation of activity, few have sought to apply this understanding

to different spheres of activity in Soviet type regimes. It is suggested here that the appli-

cation of the totalitarian public sphere in the analysis of the activities of the dissenting

opposition in these regime types goes someway to filling this lacuna.

Considering that an indispensable precondition for the creation and subsequent vitality

of civil society is the existence of institutions of a free society (democracy, the rule of law, a

free press and the freedom of association) and that these preconditions did not exist in

totalitarian regimes, the totalitarian public sphere should be viewed as a ‘stepping stone’

in the evolution toward a possible fully functioning civil society. By applying this new

framework, some of the highlighted ambiguities that currently exist in the literature

regarding transition from totalitarian regimes to functioning democracies can possibly

be overcome.

Using the totalitarian public sphere as an analytical tool is not to suggest that activity

within these spheres was coterminous or motivated by the same rationale. The fact that

these spheres were discontinuous, fragmented and scattered about societies whose estab-

lishments did everything to dictate the rules is important, because each of these regimes

was different. In utilising the totalitarian public sphere as an analytical tool, the differ-

ences, both in the way each country organised itself politically and socially, and hence

how the population responded to this, can be better explained. The concept of the totali-

tarian public sphere acknowledges that while the situation in each of the studied regimes

was different, the context was the same.

The arguments presented here are not to suggest that civil society claims constitute a

‘myth’. Nor are they designed to undermine the resoluteness of the dissenting opposition

in Soviet type regimes. Rather, it has been argued here that describing and explaining acts

of dissenting opposition in a totalitarian regime through a civil society framework is pro-

blematic. Rather than add to the existing myriad of civil society definitions, an exercise

that results only in confusion and academic ‘muddying of the water’, a new framework

by which to describe the space occupied by dissenting opposition and through which to

better understand their actions has been proposed.

76 M. Killingsworth

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The totalitarian public sphere serves as both a term by which to describe the space in

which the variety of dissenting opposition in the Soviet type regimes of Eastern Europe

organised themselves, and as an analytical framework through which to explain the activi-

ties of these groups vis-a-vis the totalitarian Party-state. It is a paradigm that understands

the intrusive capabilities and ‘weight’ of the totalitarian Soviet type states that were dis-

cussed here, while simultaneously appreciating that the nature of these regimes did not

exclude occurrences of dissenting opposition.

Notes

1. As Joseph Femia (2001) points out, Gramsci’s use of civil society is not entirely consistent: ‘In a number

of passages (of Prison Notebooks) . . . civil society is outside the state, but elsewhere (Gramsci) refers to

a general notion of the state comprising both political society and civil society’ (p. 140, emphasis in

original).

2. Tismaneanu and Turner’s misinterpretation of ‘Gorbachevism’ is compounded when they argue ‘[t]he

rise of civil society was a phenomenon that predated Mikhail Gorbachev: the new Secretary-General

simply recognised the need to catalyse this trend and capitalise upon it to further his own agenda of

‘humanising socialism’ (Tismaneanu and Turner, p. 4). They fail to appreciate that revolution was

never one of Gorbachev’s goals.

3. Garcelon (1997) agrees when he writes ‘The tendency to place instances of both “public” political rebel-

lion and “private” economic pursuits under the “rebirth of civil society” only (adds) to the confusion’ and

‘ . . . ambiguities about whether civil society belongs to the “public” or the “private” realm, to “politics or

“anti-politics” pervade Western thought’ (pp. 303–304).

4. These six features are: (1) an elaborate ideology, consisting of an official body of doctrine covering all

vital aspects of human’s existence to which everyone living in that society is supposed to adhere; (2) a

single mass party typically led by one man; (3) a system of terror, whether physical or psychic, effected

through party and secret police control and characteristically directed not only against demonstrable

‘enemies’ of the regime, but against more or less arbitrarily selected classes of the population; (4) a

technologically conditioned, near-complete monopoly of control, in the hands of the party and of the

government, of all means of effective mass communication, such as the press, radio and motion pictures;

(5) a similarly technologically conditioned, near-complete monopoly of the effective use of all weapons

of armed combat and (6) a central control and direction of the entire economy through the bureaucratic

coordination of formally independent corporate entities (Friedrich & Brzezinski, 1966, p. 22).

5. Even the actions undertaken in Friedrich and Brzezinski’s ‘islands of separateness’ cannot seriously

endanger a totalitarian regime; ‘All expectations that they could overthrow the totalitarian regime are

utopian delusions. These islands of separateness are not only eloquent testimonials to the strength of

humans character, but are also capable of preserving human beings for a better day, when the scourge

of totalitarian terror is gone (Friedrich & Brzezinski, 1966, p. 289).

6. As Cohen and Arato correctly point out, a degree of ambiguity about the status of civil society exits in

Habermas’ work. He is unable to decide whether civil society is the realm of ‘commodity exchange and

of social labour’ or a sphere mediating between the private and public authority. In line with Cohen and

Arato, it is argued here that the diagram in Structural Transformation suggests that it is more likely the

former (Cohen and Arato, 1992b, p. 140; and Habermas, 1989b, p. 30).

7. Young argues that spatial language ‘suggests that society has three distinct parts that do not overlap. It

also tempts us into placing each social institution into one and only one of these supposed spheres’

(pp. 159–160).

8. ‘As was often the case, this project and those who ran it got entangled in the self-contradictions inherent

in a paternalistic enlightenment, an enlightenment that imposed its goals on those whom it was supposed

to emancipating’ (Rittersporn et. al., 2003b, p. 438).

9. Garcelon describes the resulting phenomenon in the following manner; ‘Communism spawned a

hypertrophied public realm in the sense of state sovereignty and officialdom, but an atrophied public

realm in the sense of republic citizenship and political society’ (Garcelon, 1997, p. 311).

10. For a list of the forms the Czechoslovak samizdat took, see Skilling, 1981, p. 100.

Opposition and dissent in Soviet type regimes 77

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