The Red Flag: A History of Communism (90 page)

Events in the USSR’s southern neighbour, Afghanistan, seemed to confirm this gloomy prognosis. The authoritarian modernizer Mohammed Daoud was alienating both an urban-based left and a tribal and Islamic right. As a consequence, in April 1978, without Soviet involvement, the leftist ‘Khalq’ (‘Masses’) faction of the Communist party took power in a coup under Nur Taraki and Hajfizullah Amin. Calling themselves ‘the children of history’, these urban missionaries of modernity, many of them schoolteachers, tried to bring literacy and progress to the countryside, but their style was insensitive, and they increasingly resorted to force.
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The Soviets, for whom Afghanistan was of high strategic importance, supported the new regime, but tried and failed to moderate its behaviour. When a rebellion broke out in Herat, spear-headed by Islamist guerrillas, Moscow decided it had to act, and tried to remove Amin. The plot backfired, and Amin killed Taraki, thus leaving the Soviets with a hostile government to deal with. In December 1979, Leonid Brezhnev made the fateful decision to send in the tanks.
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The Soviet invasion, then, was a sign of weakness, not strength, as many in the West believed at the time. The optimism of the mid-1970s, when the Kremlin embraced ideological ambition in the Third World, was over. Amongst the Western Communists, meanwhile, the military confrontation between the blocs had been causing deep anxieties for some time, and especially within the Italian party, headed from 1972 by the reserved Sardinian aristocrat Enrico Berlinguer. Italy, like much of Western Europe, was suffering from an economic crisis and social tensions, but its labour unrest was especially serious and the country had the most active terrorists in Europe, mainly of the far left, but also of the far right: between 1969 and 1980, 7,622 violent attacks caused 362 deaths and 172 casualties. Berlinguer was worried about both extremes. The toppling
of Chile’s President Allende in 1973 convinced him that as the Communists became electorally stronger they would face the threat of a coup. The Spanish Communist party, led by Santiago Carillo, took a similar view following the revolutionary chaos they had seen in Portugal.

Berlinguer was convinced that Communism would only succeed if the conflict between the blocs, and within states, was moderated. His solution was the formation of a third way between Social Democracy and Soviet Communism – a movement that came to be known as ‘Eurocommunism’. It would embrace détente fully, including the Helsinki agreements on human rights which the Soviets had signed in 1975 but not adhered to; it would set its face against the militarized Cold War, including Soviet interventions; and it would formally accept multi-party systems and ‘socialist pluralism’. The Italians had most support from the Spanish, but they also succeeded in securing French approval. And in June 1976 at the pan-European Communist conference in East Berlin, all three parties claimed political independence from Moscow, and criticized the Soviets’ use of military force to spread Communism. In the compromise document, signed by all participants, all mention of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ had gone, and the term ‘Marxism-Leninism’ was replaced with ‘the great ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin’. Criticism of NATO was also absent, in deference to the Italians, who now supported membership of the Western military alliance. And in April 1978 the Spanish party became the first Communist party formally to drop the description ‘Marxist-Leninist’ in favour of ‘Marxist, democratic and revolutionary’.

Both the Italian and French parties also forged alliances with rivals at home. Berlinguer launched his ‘historic compromise’ (
compromesso storico
), designed to unite with the Christian Democrats against the threat of fascism and pull Italy out of crisis. In France, too, the Communists collaborated with François Mitterand’s Socialists in 1972, agreeing on a left-wing, but far from orthodox Communist programme. For the first time since the 1940s they were a potential party of government.

However, Berlinguer failed to create a new, successful form of Communism. The Soviets became extremely hostile to it, fearing that the Italians would create a rival Communist centre that might threaten their interests in Eastern as well as Western Europe. ‘It is unthinkable to fight Leninism in the name of Marxism’,
Pravda
declared. ‘Nothing could be more absurd.’ The Americans were also suspicious, and continued to see
the Eurocommunists as a threat to the West. Meanwhile the Italians were always much more committed to Eurocommunism than the French, whose attitudes and political culture remained more sectarian and pro-Soviet.

The parties’ ‘Popular Front’-type strategy at home also ran into difficulties. In France, the Socialists were the principal beneficiaries of the deal, as the Communists’ old workerist politics looked increasingly stale. In 1978 the Communists, now lagging seriously behind their socialist allies, began to move away from their earlier endorsement of Eurocommunist principles. They took a small role in the Socialist government of 1981, but the decline became inexorable.

The Italian Communists were initially more successful. With 34.4 per cent of the vote in the 1976 election they were not the largest parliamentary bloc, but had succeeded in depriving the Christian Democrats’ coalition of a majority for the first time since the War. And though the Communists did not take ministerial positions in the Christian Democrat-dominated government until 1978, they supported it from outside and had considerable influence. But these were difficult times economically. The party behaved much like Social Democratic governments in other countries of Western Europe at the time: it sought to improve productivity through class compromise. Unions were asked to restrain wages, whilst the state in return promised to introduce fair taxes and reorient the economy into more productive areas. At first the unions cooperated and inflation fell. But overall the economic reforms were ineffective, partly because trust between social groups was poor, and partly because the Christian Democrats were not really committed to the alliance.

The Italian Communists’ short period of responsibility without power disappointed their supporters. Radical youth were especially hostile to the Communists’ support for harsh anti-terrorism legislation: the Communists, much to their disappointment, had become the staunchest defenders of the Italian state. Student demonstrations and terrorism flourished, and, dispirited and divided, the Italian Communist Party ended the ‘historic compromise’ in early 1979. The Communists’ vote fell, and whilst support was to remain relatively high, it was to remain enfeebled until the iron curtain was parted.

However, Eurocommunism was perhaps most damaged by the deterioration in East–West relations towards the end of the 1970s. Revolutions
in the Third World and Soviet interventions convinced American political elites that the USSR was taking advantage of détente to spread Communism. Even President Jimmy Carter, committed to improving relations with the USSR and with a Third World policy oriented towards human rights rather than pure security, was anxious about Soviet behaviour. His hard-line National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was particularly suspicious of Moscow’s intentions, and the invasion of Afghanistan strengthened his position against the ‘doves’. In Moscow, meanwhile, there was little understanding of how much damage Soviet policies in the Third World were doing to détente. Rigid and unyielding, they continued to pursue a policy of zero-sum competition.

As superpower tensions increased, ‘third ways’ such as Eurocommunism became very difficult to sustain. Relations between Berlinguer and the Soviets deteriorated, and the final blow came with the invasion of Afghanistan;
¹²⁴
the French party returned to the Soviet fold, whilst the Italians condemned the invasion. Following the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981, Berlinguer made a final, devastating critique of Soviet Communism: the phase of socialism initiated by the October revolution, he declared, had ‘exhausted its progressive force’.

The worsening international atmosphere was ultimately to destroy another ‘third way’ Communist regime – the Sandinista regime brought to power by the Nicaraguan revolution of 1979. The Sandinistas (the FSLN –
Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional
) were a coalition named after the anti-American guerrilla leader of the 1920s, Augusto Sandino. Benefiting from the wide unpopularity of the dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, they came to power calling for independence from the United States and a government in favour of the poor. They were made up of three groups, one peasant-based, one urban-based, and the ‘Terceristas’ – or the ‘third alternative’, amongst whom were the Ortega brothers, Daniel and Humberto. The Ortega brothers were Marxists, though not of a particularly doctrinaire variety, but most Sandinistas were more populist. In some respects the Sandinistas were following the Cuban path, calling for nationalization, land reform and improved welfare and education; unlike the Cubans, however, they favoured political pluralism and a mixed economy.

Predictably, the regime was popular amongst the poor, but nationalization antagonized the middle classes, whilst relations with the United States were also tense. The Sandinistas were mainly interested in
developing their country, but they did welcome welfare aid from Cuba, and the Ortega brothers were keen on supporting the guerrilla groups in El Salvador and elsewhere. Even so, initially there were no hostilities between Washington and Managua; it was only with the intensification of the Cold War after the victory of Ronald Reagan in the US presidential elections in 1980 that Washington unleashed a guerrilla war against the Sandinistas, and Daniel Ortega began to receive aid from Moscow.

By 1979, therefore, the Soviets were becoming increasingly disappointed with their efforts to spread Communism in the Third World, whilst their military interventions – together with the violent Stalinism of some of their clients – were reinforcing the conviction of many of its remaining allies that Marxism-Leninism was too brutal, and Marxism had to be united with pluralism. But despite the increasing lack of confidence in the Communist world, many in the West, frightened by Soviet behaviour, were convinced that the expansion would continue. At the end of 1978, the British right-liberal journal
The Economist
gave an alarming prognosis for the next ‘singularly dangerous seven years’. After describing the high level of ‘political-military will’ of the Russians, Cubans, East Germans and Vietnamese to spread Communism throughout the world, the editorial declared: ‘It is not possible to stop the Soviet Union from expanding its military power… [But] it is essential to prevent that Soviet expansion from proceeding to the point where it controls the commanding heights, whether nuclear or non-nuclear.’
The Economist
declared this was feasible, but asked, pessimistically, ‘can the Americans find in their allies – or in themselves – even a fraction of the will essential to prevent that Soviet expansion from proceeding to the point where it controls the commanding heights, whether nuclear or non-nuclear’.
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On 11 October 1986, the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist party, Mikhail Gorbachev, met President Reagan, for the second time, in a government conference house in Reykjavik. Reagan’s style was rather low-key, compared with Gorbachev’s garrulous intensity, yet they had much in common. Both leaders were performers: Reagan had appeared in Hollywood B-films, whilst Gorbachev once had thespian ambitions and several of his colleagues commented on his dramatic skills.
¹
They were also idealists, true believers in their own systems – Reagan a Christian and militant liberal capitalist, Gorbachev an atheist and convinced Communist. And so paradoxically, and despite their sharp ideological differences, there was an affinity between these two actors on the international stage. Reagan even persuaded himself Gorbachev might be a believer – he told his aide Michael Deaver: ‘I don’t know, Mike, but I honestly think he believes in a higher power.’
²

At first the intensity of their particular ideological commitments made agreement difficult. For example, on the morning of the summit’s second day a bitter row broke out, as Reagan accused Communists of seeking world domination and Gorbachev angrily defended the Soviet record on human rights.
³
In the afternoon, though, the atmosphere mellowed. Gorbachev proposed sharp reductions in nuclear weapons, and after some wrangling over precisely what was meant, Reagan made an extraordinary declaration: ‘It would be fine with me if we eliminate all nuclear weapons.’ Gorbachev’s response was, ‘We can do that. We can eliminate them.’
⁴
They then agreed to leave their negotiators to draft a treaty. Much to the disappointment of both, the agreement slipped through their fingers, the Russians objecting to the Americans’ development of their
space-age missile defence system, ‘Star Wars’. But the agreement, which shocked many of Reagan’s advisers, showed how far things had changed since the 1970s. The tone of these debates was very different to the measured Nixon–Brezhnev talks. Both leaders took ideas seriously and were keen fighters in the ideological struggle. But they also agreed on one fundamental thing: they had to abandon the old
realpolitik
that had brought a massive build-up of nuclear weapons and had threatened the very future of humanity.

Two and a half years later, on 15 May 1989, when Gorbachev went to meet the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in Beijing, the atmosphere was very different. This was the first Soviet visit since the Sino-Soviet rift. However, whilst Gorbachev and Deng did sign a treaty, unlike Gorbachev and Reagan in Reykjavik, there was not much meeting of minds. The atmosphere was tense. Students were demonstrating in Tian’anmen Square in support of democracy, and were looking to Gorbachev for support. The technocratic Deng, moreover, was a very different Communist to Gorbachev. The meeting was friendly enough, but there was little real engagement. Gorbachev wrote blandly in his memoirs, ‘I think the key to his [Deng’s] great influence… lies in his enormous experience and healthy pragmatism.’
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