Revolutionary Years: Comparing 1848, 1989

By tradition and temperament, historians are squeamish about writing close to the event, preferring to reserve judgment until the passage of time has given them “perspective.” Hence my restraint in assessing the extraordinary changes in East Central Europe during 1989. Yet once said, there remains something comparative that a historian can venture--at the very least whether an evocation of the revolutionary year 1848 sheds light on what occurred nearly a century and a half later.

The media have already leaped to that conclusion, I think wrongly.

In 1848, the sweep of revolution extended from France to Hungary. The revolutionaries’ aims varied from country to country. In France, the goal was democracy, more specifically, to abolish property qualifications for voting. In Germany, the major aim was unity, although democratization played a part. The Italians, similarly, sought unity and a liberal regime, plus freedom from domination by the Austrian Empire. In Hungary, liberation from Austria was the paramount concern. The underlying theme was hostility to conservative and repressive rule--whether indigenous or foreign.

Superficially, much looks alike in 1848 and 1989: the leading role of professional people and students, a kind of benign contagion as the breath of freedom leaped from one capital to another, an atmosphere of joyous fraternity as, one by one, rulers gave up and Establishments collapsed. Beyond that point, however, similarities begin to break down. We begin to find more points of difference than resemblance. Events of 1848 and 1989 can be compared on at least three additional counts--though, in each case, dissimilarities dominate.

The first: violence. In 1848, there was street-fighting almost everywhere--the revolutions triumphed, but not without loss of blood. So, too, with the counterrevolutions that followed. At the start, inadequate police forces were overwhelmed; at the end, the old Establishments returned in the wake of organized, disciplined armies. In 1989, nothing of the sort occurred. Except in Romania, a special case in nearly every respect, the forces of dissent demoralized the wielders of power by vast, peaceful--and for the most part good-humored--public demonstrations. Military might was conspicuous by its absence. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union, united in applause, found reason for intervention. Even if Mikhail S. Gorbachev should fall from power, his hard-line successors would not attempt the reconquest of East Central Europe--they would be far too busy at home holding in line the restive nationalities within the Soviet Union itself.

Second: German unity, a crucial question in 1848 as it was in 1989 and today. But the problem presented itself in radically different terms. In the mid-19th Century, most Germans wanted to unite the 30-plus sovereign states that occupied the territory of the future Reich: The question was how to accomplish it. In 1848, parliamentary means and democratic aspirations failed. Two decades later, Otto von Bismarck imposed unification through the might of the Prussian army. However unsatisfactory the solution, it was at least clear-cut.

In 1990, no such solution is on the horizon. Longings for closer ties between the two Germanys may be nearly universal, but an early or unambiguous settlement appears unlikely. Gorbachev does not want it, and the East Germans themselves do not necessarily favor absorption of their country by their stronger neighbor to the west. They are confused and divided: While ordinary folk may yearn to share the benefits of West German prosperity, the emerging democratic leadership is far from sure. Many have retained socialist ideals; they are repelled by what they regard as the crass, ruthless materialism of free-enterprise capitalism--and in this revulsion they may find support among trade unionists worried about financing the East German social safety-net. As opposed to the simple, if brutal, solution of 1870, the coming together of the two Germanys today is likely to be a rather messy, piece-by-piece integration, a de facto rather than de jure process already taking place.

Third: national minorities. In 1848, the cry echoed throughout Europe that long-suppressed languages and cultures should attain nationhood. At that time neither Poland nor Czechoslovakia figured on the map. By 1989--indeed by 1919--most of Europe’s subject peoples had achieved the status of nation-states. Paradoxically enough, despite the experience of Soviet-supported tyranny, the post-World War II boundaries corresponded more closely to lines of ethnic identity than those drawn following World War I. Just think of interwar Poland’s vast Ukrainian, German and Jewish minorities or of Czechoslovakia’s 3 million disgruntled people in the Sudetenland. This reordering, of course, came at a dreadful price, in Jews exterminated and Germans forcibly resettled. But the result was to re-establish Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia as substantially homogeneous states.

Only in Romania--once again, the odd case--does ethnic conflict loom as it did in 1848, and for so long a time thereafter.

So much for points of comparison and difference. In 1989 there were three novelties absent in the earlier revolutionary year.

First, the great protagonists or initiators: Gorbachev and Poland’s Lech Walesa. The entire process is inconceivable without these two, or perhaps in Walesa’s case, without the movement he founded. Gorbachev lifted the lid and stood by in an attitude of semi-detached encouragement--with an occasional nudge or prod when it seemed required. Walesa’s Solidarity, which for nearly a decade “refused to die,” provided evidence that miracles were possible. Together they gave courage to the hesitant.

Second, the precedent of Finland--again lacking in the mid-19th-Century map. Curiously enough, this has been little talked about in the U.S. press, except possibly in denigrating references to “Finlandization.” But it was post-1945 Finland that proved a nation could live alongside the Soviet Union and at the same time maintain a thriving democracy. Of course, the Finns have been obliged to tread warily, to avoid foreign-policy initiatives that might offend their great neighbor. But most seem to have been willing to exchange limitations on actions abroad in return for freedom at home. When Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia settle down, they may find themselves in much the same situation. The Warsaw Pact may come to an end as a functioning military alliance; its legacy may well be Finlandization in the sense of special heed to the wishes and needs of the Soviet leadership.

Third, an emerging ideological consensus. Obviously in this realm, one is reduced to guesswork. Political parties--notably in Hungary--are still fragmented or groping to get their acts together. New leaders are just beginning to surface. Rare are the figures with nationwide “name recognition,” such as the down-to-earth Communist reformer Hans Modrow in East Germany or the sprightly playwright-president Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia.

The ideological situation is bound to remain fluid until 1990 elections are held. Meanwhile, the spectrum of opinion looks encouragingly narrow--for continental Europe, almost unprecedentedly narrow--extending only from free enterprise democracy to an advanced welfare-state or social-democratic variation thereof. Most points are agreed on: Those at issue are no more divisive than in Britain.

The stress falls on what is unique. The East Central European Revolutions of 1989, unlike those of 1848, did not follow the “classic” scenario of the great French Revolution of 1789. They established a new pattern, reconciliatory, even merry--think of Prague. In 1989, the Western world was scheduled to look back and celebrate a bicentennial. Before the year was out, it found itself engaged in another kind of celebration: a glimpse into an unsuspected future.